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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



I. Esthetics ; or, The Science of Beauty. 8vo, cloth $1.50 

II. Ethics; or, The Science of Duty. 8vo, cloth 1.75 

III. Natural Theology. 8vo, cloth 1.50 

IV. The Science of Mind. 8vo, cloth 2.00 

V. The Philosophy of English Literature, Lectures deliv- 
ered before the Lowell Institute, Boston. 8vo, cloth .... 1.50 

VI. The Growth and Grades of Intelligence ; or, Com- 
parative Psychology. 8vo, cloth 1.50 

VII. A Philosophy of Religion ; or, the Rational Grounds 

OF Religious Belief. 8vo, cloth 2.00 

VIII. Philosophy of Rhetoric. 8vo, cloth 1.25 

IX. The Words of Christ. 8vo, cloth 1.50 

X. Problems in Philosophy. 8vo, cloth 1.50 

XI. Sociology. 8vo, cloth 1.50 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



AN 



HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION 



OF PHILOSOPHY 



BY 



JOHN BASCOM 



AUTHOR OF "science OF MIND," "GROWTH AND GRADES OF INTELLIGENCE,'' 
" PROBLEMS IN PHILOSOPHY," " ETHICS," ETC., ETC. 



^ 



"^OC^ 9 1893 




G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



NEW YORK 

27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST. 



LONDON 

24 BEDFORD ST., STRAND 



^\t limiktrbotker ^ress 
1893 



/ 






Copyright, 1893, bv 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 



Entered at Stationer's Hall, London, 
By G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS. 



THIS VOLUME IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 

TO THE 

GRADUATES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, 

WITH WHOM 

ITS THEMES WERE DISCUSSED. 



PREFACE. 

It is not our object, in the present work, to offer the 
facts of philosophy in a form more acceptable to ourselves 
than the elaborate works now current ; much less do we 
expect to add, at any point, to the fulness of these 
presentations. Our aim is simply to make, in as brief a 
compass as possible, a contribution to a clearer under- 
standing of the facts of philosophy in their dependence on 
each other, and in the conclusions to which they naturally 
lead. In accomplishing this purpose, we shall have occa- 
sion only for a brief statement of the primary features in 
the different phases that philosophy has assumed, and 
shall take for granted considerable familiarity with the 
topics under discussion. If we render any aid, it will be 
aid in comprehending the facts rather than in securing a 
more complete knowledge of them. 

We shall be more interested in the distinctive and ex- 
treme positions which writers and schools of philosophy 
have taken, the peculiar impulses they have felt and im- 
parted, than in the limitations, qualifications, and partial 
retractions by which they have striven later to restore the 
balance of thought and to defend themselves against 
attack. The points emphasized will be those which define 
the directions of philosophical inquiry, and which best 
serve to mark the dependence of its successive positions 
in its descent to our time. Our work should be judged 
wholly by this its explanatory purpose. 



VI PREFACE. 

There are two sorts of superficiality — the possession 
of numerous facts that are not well understood, the pos- 
session of theories that are not well sustained by the facts. 
It is against the first of these that our contention chiefly 
lies in this interpretation of philosophy. The very multi- 
plicity of phenomena may hide from us their significancy, 
and leave us content with the simple knowledge of acqui- 
sition. Our present effort is to penetrate the meaning of 
phenomena, not to multiply them. We shall be satisfied, 
on the side of instruction, if we do not misrepresent or 
pervert them ; we shall be wholly satisfied, on the side of 
exposition, if we assist the reader in pursuing the paths 
of philosophy with increased insight and pleasure. All 
these ingenious and obscure ramifications of thought have 
grown out of each other, have served partial and tempo- 
rary purposes of explanation, and, in spite of appearances, 
have led us somewhat nearer the goal of truth. Their 
extreme statements have been compensatory movements 
which have helped to restore the equilibrium of the mind. 
This supreme fact in philosophy of coherency, we shall 
endeavor to bring more distinctly into the light. Meta- 
physics are often derided and avoided as worthless, spo- 
radic products of speculation, because this their inevitable- 
ness, both in the efforts after growth and in the errors of 
growth, is not sufficiently felt. The most comprehensive 
outlook we can possibly take of the products of the 
human min'd is one in survey of those manifold phases of 
philosophy by which it has sought to explain the world 
to itself. 

The dates given are, for the most part, those of Ueber- 
weg. 



CONTENTS. 

INTRODUCTION. 

PAGE 

§ I. An Interpretation of Philosophy implies what, . . . . i 

§ 2. Philosophy and knowledge, ....... 2 

§ 3. Nature of knowledge, 5 

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. 

DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. European philosophy, . . . . . . . .8 

§ 2. Ancient philosophy, 10 

PART I. 

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 
CHAPTER L 

THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Speculative inquiry in Greece, ....... 12 

§ 2. The beginning of philosophy, ....... 12 

§ 3. Pythagoras and Doric philosophy, . . . . . .15 

§ 4. Parmenides and the Eleatic School, ...... 17 

i^ 5. Heraclitus and the Ionic School, ...... 20 

§ 6. Democritus and the Atomists, ....... 23 

§ 7. Empedocles and the later Ionic School, . . . . .24 

§ 8. Results, . . .25 

CHAPTER II. 

SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I, The Sophists, .......... 29 

§ 2. Protagoras — Gorgias, ......... 32 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



^ 3. Socrates, . 

§ 4. Disciples of Socrates, 

§ 5. Plato, 

§ 6. Ethics of Plato, 

§ 7. Aristotle, . 

§ 8. Ethics of Aristotle, . 

§ 9. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, 

§ 10. Two Schools in Ethics — Epicurus, 

§11. Zeno and Stoicism, . . , 

§12. Scepticism, .... 

§ 13. Eclecticism, .... 



CHAPTER III. 

THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Theosophy — three forms — Hellenistic form, 

§ 2. Neo-Pythagoreans — Neo-Platonists, . 

§ 3. Results — Exaltation of God, 

§4. Ecstasy, ....... 

§ 5. The material world and God, 



PAGE 

33 
34 
36 

44 

48 

51 
55 
57 
61 

67 
69 



71 

77 
80 

83 
84 



PART II. 



MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 



§ I. The transition, .... 
§ 2. Character of mediaeval philosophy. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD. 



§ I. Judaism and Christianity, ....... 

§ 2. The Greek Church and the Latin Church, . . . , 

CHAPTER II. 

THEMES OF DISCUSSION IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Nature and government of God, . . . . . 
§ 2. Nature of general terms, 



9T 

93 



96 
99 



102 
104 



CONTENTS. 



IX 



PAGE 

§3. Results, 113 

§4. Three forms of general terms, 121 

CHAPTER III. 

PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Johannes Scotus Erigena, 127 

§ 2. Roscellinus — Anselm — Abelard, ....... 129 

i^ 3. Averroes — Alexander of Hales — Albertus, 133 

§4. Thomas Aquinas, ......... 135 

§ 5. Johannes Duns Scotus, ........ 145 

§ 6. William of Occam, 148 

§ 7. Results, 149 

PART III. 



MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

I. The transition, .......... 152 

CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 



§ I. Decay of scholasticism, 

§ 2. Development of science, 

§3. Unbelief, . 

^ 4. Reformation, 



155 
158 
159 
159 



CHAPTER II. 



TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 



§ I. Sir Francis Bacon, 

§ 2. Rene Descartes, . 

^5,3. Monism vs. dualism, . 

§4. Baruch de Spinoza, 

§ 5. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz 



164 
167 
181 
186 
193 



CHAPTER HI. 

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 



§ I. The new era, 

^ 2. National life and philosophy, 



203 
204 



X CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

THE EARLY EMPIRICAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

PAGE 

§ 3. Thomas Hobbes, ......... 208 

^ 4. John Locke, .......... 210 

§5. David Hartley, 218 

§ 6. Joseph Priestley — Erasmus Darwin, ...... 220 

~§ 7. David Hume, .......... 221 

PART II.s 

THE LATER EMPIRICAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 8. James Mill, .......... 231 

§ 9. John Stuart Mill, . . 235 

§ 10. Alexander Bain, . . . . . . . . . 243 

§ II. Herbert Spencer, ......... 244 

§ 12. "William B. Carpenter, 255 

§ 13. George John Romanes, ........ 257 

§ 14. Evolution and empiricism, ....... 259 

PART III. 

THE ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 15. Starting-point in happiness, ....... 267 

§ 16. "William Paley — Jeremy Bentham, 268 

§17. John Stuart Mill — Herbert Spencer 270 

§ 18. Empiricism and ethics, ........ 273 

PART IV. 

DISSENTIENT PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND. 

§ 19. Lord Herbert, 275 

§ 20. Ralph Cudworth — Henry More, 278 

§21. Samuel Clarke, 279 

§ 22. Bishop Berkeley, 280 

§ 23. Bishop Butler 283 

§ 24. James Martineau, ......... 284 

CHAPTER IV. 

SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Its occasion, . . . . . . . . . . 290 

§ 2. Thomas Reid, 292 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



PAGE 

§ 3. Dugald Stewart, 298 

§ 4. Thomas Brown, 299 

§5. Sir William Hamilton, 300 

§ 6. Ethics in Scottish Philosophy 306 

CHAPTER V. 

__ PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

§ I. Jonathan Edwards, 310 

§2. James McCosh, 315 

§3. Mark Hopkins, . . 318 

-T-g4. Laurens P. Hickok, 3^9 

§ 5. Empirical philosophy, 321 

§ 6. Idealistic philosophy, 322 

CPIAPTER VI. 

PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

§ I. National character, . 325 

PART I. 

FRENCH MATERIALISM. 



§ 2. Julien Offroy de la Mettrie, 

§ 3. Etienne Bonnet de Condillac, 

§4. Baron d'Holbach, 

§ 5. H. A, Taine, 

§ 6. Auguste Comte, . 

§ 7. Positivism and Sociology, . 



327 
330 
331 
332 
335 
346 



PART II. 



INTUITIONAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

§ 8. Nature of intuitionalism, . . . . . . . . 355 

§ 9. Maine de Biran, ......... 359 

§ 10. Victor Cousin, .......... 361 

§ II. Reaction against empiricism, ....... 366 

§ 12. Ethics, 366 



xu 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER VII. 



PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY. 



§ I. Position held by Italy, 

§ 2. Giovachino Ventura and others, 

§ 3. Antonio Rosmini and others. 



PAGE 

368 
369 

371 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 
I. Methods in philosophy, . . . . . 



375 



PART I. 



§ 2. Immanuel Kant, 

§ 3. "Critique of the Pure Reason," 

§ 4. Illusions of Kant's philosophy, , 

§ 5. The nature of things-in-themselves, 

§ 6. Powers of mind, 

§ 7. Antinomies of Kant, 

§ 8. The being of God, 

§ 9. Form-elements, 

§ 10. Categories of Kant, . 

§ II. " Critique of the Practical Reason," 

§ 12. ** Critique of the Faculty of Judgment," 

§ 13. *' Back to Kant," .... 

PART II. 

IDEALISM IN GERiMANY. 



§ 14. Nature of knowledge, 

§15. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, 

§16. " " 

§ 17. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, 

§ 18. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 

§ 19. The movement by triplets, 

§ 20. Idealism — Monism, . 



379 

382 
386 
389 
395 
397 
404 

405 
410 
416 

423 
426 



427 

432 

436 
438 
442 
445 
447 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PART III. 

IDEALISTIC MATERIALISM. 

PAGE 

§ 21. Arthur Schopenhauer, ........ 458 

§ 22. E. V. Hartmann, ......... 461 

PART IV. 

MATERIALISTIC TENDENCIES. 

§ 23. Materialistic exposition, . 464 

§ 24. Physiological psychology, ........ 467 

§ 25. Johann Friedrich Herbart, . . . . . . . 474 

§26. " " " 477 

PART V. 

REALISM IN GERMANY. 

§ 27. Idealism and Realism, ........ 4S3 

§ 28. Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher, ..... 485 

§ 2g, Friedrich Eduard Beneke, ....... 487 

§30. Rudolph Hermann Lotze, . . . . . . .491 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE CONCLUSION. 

§ I. German philosophy, ......... 498 

§ 2. Monism, ........... 500 

§ 3. The growth of philosophy and constructive realism, . . . 504 



AN 

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION 
OF PHILOSOPHY. 



INTRODUCTION. 

§ I. An historical interpretation of the progress of phi- 
losophy impHes a general knowledge of the development 
of truth in this direction ; the ability to indicate distinctly 
the position occupied by each person, each school, each 
era. In this progressive movement ; a recognition of their 
dependence In growth on each other, and so, as the all- 
important result, the power to understand the contribu- 
tions and confirmations which they bring to our present 
convictions. If we believe in the essential integrity of the 
human mind — and if we do not, it is hardly worth our while 
to waste our emotions on so earnest inquiry — we cannot 
doubt that our power to-day to lay down, with any cer- 
tainty, the leading lines of truth, must turn very much on 
our apprehension of the results of thought in the years 
that are past. If knowledge, in each period, is partial and 
relative — as it assuredly Is — Its chief value is found in 
offering a safe, transitional term to that more perfect 
presentation which is to spring out of It. We need to 
distinguish terminal from lateral buds, and, by means 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

of the general symmetry of growth, separate those more 
sporadic systems which have simply filled in unoccupied 
spaces from those central ones which have advanced us 
along the axis of development. If there is a true growth 
in thought, it will show this pushing, centralizing ten- 
dency, compared with which all other movements are 
secondary and subordinate. We shall thus be able to 
confirm the truth we now hold by the support which it 
derives from the increasing insight of men hitherto, and 
by the open way it still offers to inquiry. Directions 
rather than positions, lines rather than points, are the true 
results of research in the higher fields of knowledge ; and 
these are laid down by the movements of mind, by its 
successive and successful efforts in the past. If we really 
know the ground over which we have travelled in philos- 
ophy, and where we now are, we are in the best possible 
condition for defining the right methods of development, 
and for discerning the issues to which all investigation is 
tending. 

§2. Philosophy brings a clear, deep, light-bearing at- 
mosphere to the knowledge of men. It spreads above 
the narrow bonds of association the living products of 
thought, the broad concave of truth, and brings life- 
giving impulses from every quarter to minister to them. 
Knowledge is not defined by philosophy. It already 
exists in the experience of men, in hourly affirmations, 
confirmed by them in a thousand ways amid the manifold 
processes of life. The question for philosophy to answer 
is not whether this knowledge is correct or incorrect. 
Its correctness is already established in that general con- 
viction, so broad in its premises, so irresistible in its 
authority, as compared Avith the speculations of any 
one man or set of men concerning it. Philosophy is not 



NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY. 3 

competent to question knowledge, but only to broaden 
and correct it ; to determine whether the mists that press 
in close upon this field of vision can be dispersed, and the 
depths which quietly infold it laid open. Philosophy is 
the astronomy of our intellectual system, and its office is to 
carry, in harmonious extension, the principles of knowl- 
edge we already hold in these centres of observation to 
the very verge of thought. What the mind longs for is 
that the little shall be enclosed in the large, the transient 
be included in the permanent, and one pure medium of 
light envelop us everywhere. We may know but a trifle 
of the vastness about us. We are content to abide under 
its infinity. What we do desire is that it shall be every- 
where penetrable to inquiry, that it shall be the one indi- 
visible, homogeneous, and eternal field of thought, our 
inheritance of truth. 

Whatever conclusions philosophy may reach, they must 
be thoroughly consistent with knowledge. Knowledge 
must be transparent under this more comprehensive light, 
and be only the more luminous by means of it. Familiar 
truths must grow brilliant in it, like crystals, and offer, 
on all sides, facets of reflection. A philosophy that con- 
tradicts knowledge, or lies to one side of it, has arisen in 
forgetfulness of its own problem. That problem is the 
exposition of the wider relations of truth, the tracing out- 
ward of the indications of knowledge, that the mind may 
return inward again with an increased justification of 
knowledge to itself. It is impossible that philosophy, itself 
a later and more speculative product of mind, should con- 
tradict knowledge. Knowledge is the historic fruit of 
human thought, working in all persons, all places, and all 
periods. It is, by its own inertia, as immovable as the 
world itself. It is folly to confront universal conviction 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

by one man's thought. The philosophy that undertakes 
this task will be ground to dust as a small thing, a stone 
pressed and revolved by the undying strength of a glacier. 
That a single person, in remote, wayward speculation, 
should attempt to set aside, or even to interpret in some 
remote way, the accumulated experience of all time, grow- 
ing into universal convictions under the double ministra- 
tion of physical , tendencies and spiritual appetencies, is 
an absurdity. It is as if one should strive to alter the 
orbit of the earth by jumping on it. A theory of knowl- 
edge that contradicts knowledge is one that pushes aside 
the subject-matter with which it has to deal, and expounds 
the generic movement of the race by the erratic departure 
of individuals from it. There may come corrections of 
knowledge out of knowledge itself, corrections wholly in 
harmony with its fundamental methods, but there can be 
no criticism by mind that invalidates the processes of 
mind and the conclusions held under them. It is not the 
popular as opposed to the disciplined mind that is magni- 
fied by the assertion, but the normal as opposed to the 
exceptional activity of mind. 

Science is homogeneous with knowledge. It does in 
minor directions precisely what philosophy should do in 
major ones. It makes our insight deeper and more con 
sistent. It accepts the habitual force of thought, and 
bears it forward in a full performance of its oflfice. It tests 
its own ad'ditions and corrections by their concurrence with 
knowledge, by their ability to carry familiar lines of light 
a little farther. Philosophy must start from the same 
centres of truth and return to them. All conclusions 
that lie beyond the primary convictions of men will b( 
aberrations, vagaries. An historic interpretation of phi 
losophy will enforce this fundamental fact, and show how 



NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 5 

meteoric, flickering, and ineffectual have been all theories 
of the physical and spiritual universe which have not 
planted themselves at once on the first terms of ex- 
perience. 

§ 3. Knowledge is made up of two portions, ultimate 
terms and the relations between these terms. These 
terms, as simple, are of necessity primary, and capable of 
no further establishment than that involved in a direct 
recognition of their being. First terms once accepted, 
the reflective powers find play in tracing their inter- 
actions ; and the great bulk of what we call knowledge 
is a knowing of the relations of things to each other. 
Philosophy is found, first, in correct analysis, reaching 
true ultimates and accepting them as such ; and, sec- 
ond, in a just estimate of the value of thought, and of 
its inherent limitations in tracing the dependencies of 
these primitive terms. The first is more preeminently 
the problem of philosophy ; though the proper extension 
and correct balance of our mental processes within them- 
selves remain to be determined by philosophy in every 
possible bearing of them. The winning of true ultimates 
has been the most difificult and perplexing labor of mind. 
There has been a very general feeling that what is here 
termed an ultimate is a negation of philosophy ; a vex- 
atious limit of thought which must itself be transcended. 
It is the work of philosophy not to carry comprehension 
beyond itself, but to inquire into its directions and condi- 
tions. Comprehension is not an unconditional act, but 
one thoroughly conditioned. The very desire to overleap 
the limits of knowledge arises from the absence of true 
philosophy ; from a vague, verbal tendency of thought, 
as if the unconditioned were the antecedent and source of 
the conditioned ; as if we had not reached the secrets of 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

knowledge till we had transcended knowledge, or found 
the ultimate till we had passed beyond all terms of expe- 
rience. It is the office of philosophy to overcome this 
wayward proclivity ; to explore the eternal conditions of 
order; and to reject utterly the chaotic and formless as a 
productive region that encloses the definite creations of 
reason and contains their germs. We define philosophy 
as a discussion of the nature and limits of knowledge. 

Analysis, a search after ultimates, is the first and ever- 
returning labor of philosophy. These ultimates, whether 
they are elements in the physical world, sensations in the 
sensuous world, ideas in the intellectual world, are all to 
find their confirmation in experience. Being correctly 
taken, they yield at once the entire field of inductive and 
deductive reasoning by which we trace their connections 
with each other. Thus the physical world starts in phe- 
nomena, and the intellectual world in form elements, and 
these being conceded, we are prepared to follow out their 
constructive dependencies. The hope to evoke all things 
out of nothing, or — which is another phase of the same 
effort — all things out of one thing, is an illusion of 
thought which it is the instant duty of philosophy to dis- 
pel. It should be the ambition of philosophy not to over- 
leap itself — a form of transcendent folly — but to define 
itself, remembering that definition and creation are always 
identical, equally in the first and in the latest act. 

If this view is correct, knowledge lies, from the nature 
of the case — that is, by the insight of reason — between 
two distinct terms, including them both, data and the 
relation of data ; insights and expositions ; positions, as 
in geometry, and the bearings of positions on each other. 
The historic progress of philosophy will be primarily dis- 
closed by its search after a more correct analysis, a more 



NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 7 

distinct cognition of ultimates, as indispensable and valid 
terms of truth ; and, afterward, by attaining more re- 
strained and better harmonized processes of thought 
under them. Our philosophy will thus, in its most spec- 
ulative action, grow up within our experience, and look 
to it momentarily for confirmation. The stakes will be 
driven and the cords drawn, not in a purely subjective 
region, much less in one merely objective, but in a field 
of facts constantly illuminated by a clear atmosphere of 
ideas that rounds over it like the vault of heaven. Phi- 
losophy has slowly pitched its tent between earth and 
sky, and it will be our pleasure to see how it has lifted 
and spread wide its canvas, and bound it fast under all 
the flaws of controversy. 



PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. 

DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. The one line of speculative thought whose fruits 
we are enjoying is that of European philosophy. We 
shall consider no other except in connection with it, and 
as modifying, in their formation, these theories of the 
universe. European philosophy readily falls into three 
periods, strongly separated from each other in their direc- 
tions of inquiry and in the form of life which accompanied 
each phase of development. They are ancient, mediaeval, 
and modern philosophy. Ancient philosophy is that of 
Greece, and, chiefly by transfer, that of Rome ; mediaeval 
philosophy is primarily that of the Latin Church during 
its period of unity and power ; modern philosophy is that 
of the last three centuries, and has been associated with 
a marked diversity in religious beliefs and national life. 
While each succeeding period has felt strongly the influ- 
ence of the preceding one, it has been separate from it 
and distinct in its own ruling tendency. 

Ancient philosophy was primarily one of cosmology, 
medieval philosophy of theosophy, and modern philoso- 
phy of ontology. These are the three divisions of phi- 
losophy, and they naturally arise in the order of discussion 
here indicated. The attention of the mind is first directed 
to the construction and origin of the world about us as a 
complex fact. Out of this inquiry springs the question 



DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 9 

of the existence of the Divine Being, of his nature, and 
of his creating and governing power. This discussion 
in turn leads to a more profound consideration of the 
relation of matter and of mind, and of their respective 
claims as primitive, independent forms of being. The 
earliest inquiry pushes toward this question and helps to 
raise it, but it is not till a later period that it becomes the 
absorbing point of exposition. 

Leading features in cosmology, in the meantime, are 
settled by physical investigation ; while psychology, in its 
effort to grasp the true character of mental powers, be- 
comes a field of vigorous strife. The ultimate terms of 
knowledge and forms of being accepted by us must turn 
on our estimate of the nature of mind. In ancient phi- 
losophy the separation between matter and mind was left 
relatively obscure ; the two were discussed together as 
parts of one problem — the origin of things. In mediaeval 
philosophy, the distinction, as a minor one, was over- 
shadowed by the attributes of God. In modern philoso- 
phy, the two forms of being, physical and spiritual, have 
been under constant consideration as the key of all specu- 
lative thought. Cosmology and theosophy are both seen 
to be involved In their relation. This dependence once 
settled, other conclusions follow with ease and certainty. 

Philosophy, a consideration of the nature and limits of 
knowledge, touches all modes of science and forms of 
faith. It is thus mingled with various inquiries. It is 
intimately associated with cosmology, theosophy, and 
psychology. Cosmology discusses the formation of the 
[world ; theosophy, the nature of God ; and psychology, the 
owers of the mind. Psychology is properly preliminary 
to any inquiry into the nature of knowledge ; ontology is 
of the substance of philosophy, as it investigates the ulti- 



lO PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. 

mate forms of being. The logical form of inquiry would 
be psychology, ontology, cosmology, theosophy. Having 
defined the range of our own powers, we are ready to 
determine by means of them the ultimate terms of being, 
to trace these terms in the unfolding of events, and from 
these events to approach the problem of the Divine 
Presence. 

The natural order is never the logical order. Complex 
phenomena first offer themselves to us. Only by many 
analyses and many references do we slowly approach 
ultimate truths. We explore the river of knowledge 
from the mouth upward. These various associated forms 
of inquiry combine and re-combine in very many ways in 
the slow, irregular progress of thought. 

§ 2. Ancient philosophy falls into three periods. The 
first extends from the dawn of inquiry to the time of 
Socrates ; the second, from the time of Socrates to the 
Christian era ; the third, from the Christian era to the 
opening of mediaeval philosophy. The first period covers 
the gradual development of speculative thought in Greece ; 
the second, its stage of highest attainment ; and the third, 
its slow decline. The first era is more purely one of cos- 
mology ; the second adds to this discussion that of anthro- 
pology ; and the third passes on to theosophy. The first 
and the second periods are definitely divisible from each 
other. Socrates was not only the earliest of the great 
men of the middle era ; he gave a decisively new and 
more intellectual direction to inquiry. The second and 
the third periods are indivisible, otherwise than arbitrarily, 
both in time and in theme. The transitions are slight 
and slow, arising with different degrees of distinctness in 
different places. There is also the same obscurity of 
dividing lines in the passage from ancient to mediaeval 



DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. II 

philosophy. The former "gradually decayed with the 
decay of Roman civilization, and the latter slowly grew 
with the growth of Latin Christianity. The two, there- 
fore, lay in the soil together during the centuries of over- 
throw, the one as the dissolving life of the past, the other 
as the slowly informing life of the future ; the one as the 
mould of departing civilization, the other as the seeds of 
coming civilization. The movement which opened mod- 
ern philosophy was well-defined and general. A new era, 
however, is never a question of quantities. That which 
remains of the old counts for little ; that which expresses 
fresh power counts for much. 



PART I. 

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. The Greek was well fitted for speculative Inquiry, 
not only by original vivacity of mind, not only by many 
distinct centres of civic life, which both by their separation 
and by their union promoted the most lively individuality 
of thought, but also by the absence of any overbearing 
ecclesiasticism. The religious life of the Greek was not 
such as to intimidate the mind, to lay down for it any 
directions which it must pursue, or any limits within which 
it must confine itself. It has rarely happened in the 
world's history that any religious system has laid lighter 
intellectual restraints on its votaries. The gods of Olym- 
pus, themselves a higher kind of human beings, were so 
enclosed in nature as to give very few hints by which to 
settle its constructive problems. The myths of religion 
bore a poetic, free form, and did not, like those of oriental 
faith, involve a cosmogony, or burden the mind with the 
leading features of a speculative method. No dominant 
notion, like that of emanation, predetermined the direc- 
tion of thought. 

§ 2. Grecian philosophy made a definite beginning with 



14 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

Thales (640) of Miletus. He gave rise to the Ionian 
school, whose early representatives were Anaximander 
(611) and Anaximenes, also of Miletus. Thales regarded 
water as the primitive element ; Anaximenes gave this 
position to air ; while Anaximander accepted, in place of 
specific substances, an indeterminate substance, infinite in 
quantity, from which the later varieties of matter were 
evolved. We thus have an early example of an obscure, 
general form accepted as the source of special forms ; of 
the definite referred to the indefinite. The world was 
regarded by this school as a living thing. As the soul of 
man, which is air, animates the body, so the atmosphere, 
which is vital and intelligent, gives animation to the 
world. Matter and life are inseparable. Life is the one 
arranging power. 

These early speculations show how much easier it is to 
hit on right directions of thought than it is to walk with 
due restraint in them. The mind, in its satisfaction with 
what is explained, overlooks the many things which are 
not explained. It treats the problem before it in a very 
fragmentary way, and not as one whole. Struck with 
some slight resemblance, it turns it at once into a com- 
plete correspondence. Water and air are very diffusive, 
penetrative substances, and play an especially important 
part in living processes. They thus came to be regarded 
as constructive terms of primary importance. Yet many 
facts, close at hand and equally obvious with those which 
had drawn attention, were neglected in the assertion that 
either of them was the primitive element. A knowledge 
of the facts was not aided but obstructed by this assertion. 

An indeterminate substance, the world-stuff of Anaxi- 
mander, is a suggestion that opens a door to inquiry, but 
brings no explanation till the steps of separation and 



PYTHAGORAS. 1 5 

evolution by which it passes into specific things can at 
least be suggested. . The speculation is rather an instinct- 
ive response to the demand which our rational powers 
make upon us for causes, than an intelligible meeting of 
that demand. Air is closely associated with life, but the 
identification of the two is not only hasty, it is wholly 
obscure. It confounds thought, to begin with, though it 
gratifies it with some later explanations. Hylozoism, the 
reference of all construction to life, is an induction, but 
one so precipitate as to carry no light with it. There is a 
plastic power of arrangement in all living things which we 
term life. Comparing one living thing with another, in 
this particular, we reduce the mystery to its simplest 
terms by observing its uniformity throughout the organic 
world. 

But if we carry life beyond this world of organisms, 
conditions become so diverse, so antagonistic even, that 
not a glimmer of additional insight is given by the exten- 
sion. The affirmation is simply a blind impulse of reason, 
willing to satisfy itself with an inadequate statement 
rather than to be left without any explanation. The in- 
evitableness, and yet the insufficiency, of this movement 
of thought indicate its instinctive, tentative character. 
We very slowly learn to give an ultimate fact, like life, 
its simplest expression, and then to carefully confine it, 
under experience, within its own range of operations. 

§ 3. The philosophy which flourished among the Doric 
Greeks is primarily referable to Pythagoras (582), who 
removed from Samos to Crotona, Italy, and there estab- 
lished a secret fraternity. The method of thought repre- 
sented by him may, with peculiar fitness, be called a 
school. It grew up among the disciples of Pythagoras, 
who were closely united to him as a master, none of them 



l6 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

attaining any marked preeminence. The doctrines as- 
cribed to Pythagoras cannot be given an exact, personal 
reference with any certainty. They were the fruits of the 
fraternity, were associated with a rigid ethical temper, 
and with an unbounded reverence for the one dominant 
mind. 

The ruling idea in this philosophy was that of number. 
Number, according to it, is the very substance of things. 
This conception was amplified into many fantastic expla- 
nations. One is reason, unchangeable. Two is opinion, 
divisible, feminine. Three is indivisible, masculine. Four 
is justice, divisible into equal parts. Five is marriage, the 
union of two and three. 

Number enters especially into music, and music became 
a prominent term in the fanciful constructions of the 
Doric school. The soul of man, transiently united to the 
body, is a harmony. The earth and its counter-earth 
revolve around a central fire, and the motion of the 
spheres is musical, made so by the intervention of spaces 
which have the ratios of music. 

That very ancient and persistent doctrine, metempsy- 
chosis, was held by Pythagoras, and may readily have 
been derived by him from oriental sources. 

This school, in contrast with the Ionic philosophers, 
who pushed forward material terms in a somewhat gross 
way, was idealistic in its tendencies. It was idealistic in 
this sense :" it emphasized conceptions of the mind more 
than the material things with which they are associated, 
and assigned them an independent formative power. 
Number, a pure idea, referrible to the mind wholly, a 
notion very pervasive, subtile, and constructive in its appli- 
cations, was laid hold of as embracing the secret nature 
and energy of things, and of that order which prevails 



PYTHAGORAS. 1 7 

among them. Without any analysis that disclosed the 
origin and office of this conception, the mind busied itself 
in the expansion of the idea, and then referred the rela- 
tions involved in number to number itself as a productive 
entity. This method has been reproduced in many later 
speculations, with the same admirable ingenuity and with 
the same fanciful force. 

§ 4. The Eleatic school derived its name from Elea, 
Italy. Parmenides (510) was preeminent in this school. 
Prominent among the subjects of inquiry by the Greeks 
was the relation between the permanent and the change- 
able, the substantial and the phenomenal. Eleatic philos- 
ophy, like that of Pythagoras, was chiefly occupied with 
ideas. Being — one of the mind's explanatory notions — 
was regarded as itself substantial, the substratum of all 
things. Being is, non-being is not. Space, then, is a 
plenum. Being cannot change. There is no becoming. 
Changes, phenomena, are deceptions of the senses. The 
thoughts give the test of reality. What is thinkable is 
real. Change is not thinkable, and therefore unreal. 

We have as yet no clear separation of the .physical and 
the spiritual from each other, but terms that are purely 
terms of thought, notions called up by the mind in its 
processes of comprehension, are expanded in a verbal form 
and made to overrule and exclude the phenomena which 
have been their occasion. These ideas, therefore, instead 
of becoming the conditions of knowledge in the mind's 
inquiry into things, took possession, in a vague, empty 
way, of the field of truth, and so precluded its successful 
cultivation. Words rather than things, symbols rather than 
substances, the shadowy form-elements of thought rather 
than the contents included in them, came under consid- 
eration, and the mind was confused and bewildered in the 
2 



1 8 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

contemplation of its own solvents, instead of enabled by 
means of them to enter on that movement outward and 
forward in which its real progress consists. The young 
soldier was so pleased with his equipment that he occu- 
pied himself wholly with the manual of arms. 

Zeno of Elea (490) furnished the proof of the philoso- 
phy by pointing out the apparent contradictions between 
our conceptions and the phenomena we put under them, 
and so establishing, as he thought, the illusory character 
of appearances. If there were such contradictions, it 
would remain open to inquire what portion of our knowl- 
edge is correct, or if any portion of an inconsistent and 
contradictory product can be saved. The instinctive 
way in which we refuse to allow the alleged illusions of 
knowledge to enter into and dissolve our own thought 
concerning them, shows the inner vitality of reason, a 
hold on intellectual life that cannot be shaken off. 

Zeno argued that no space, in spite of appearances, 
could be passed over, because any space can be divided 
into an infinite number of parts, and we cannot surmount 
the infinite. This is an entanglement which has tripped 
the feet of philosophers from the beginning until now. 
The inference should run in the opposite direction. The 
finite cannot contain an infinite number of parts. A 
finite space is capable of indefinite subdivision, but not of 
infinite subdivision. Achilles, he asserted, could not 
overtake the tortoise, because when Achilles reaches the 
point first occupied by the tortoise, the tortoise is no 
longer there. If we overcome half an intervening dis- 
tance, half still remains. If we now pass over half the 
residue, a half is still before us ; and so on forever. The 
last half is never surmounted. In philosophy, at least, 
Achilles has not fully run down the tortoise. 



ZENO. 19 

It is not a little surprising that riddles of this order 
have so long perplexed human thought. It is still more 
surprising that the conclusions drawn from them have 
been so disproportionate to the premises and so sweep- 
ing. In pursuing the tortoise, or in making half the dis- 
tance between two objects — for the two examples involve 
the same difficulty — the first portion of the effort, which 
the supposition concedes as successfully accomplished, 
differs in nothing from the last portion, which it shuts 
out. If the last half cannot be passed over, neither can 
the first half. The embarrassment is found simply in the 
inability of the mind to exhaust a period or a space by 
indefinitely subdividing it. The very nature of the proc- 
ess subjects it to this limitation. Attention is drawn to 
the mental difficulty and diverted from the actual motion, 
which involves no such discrimination of parts. One 
should, by the same method, conclude that it is impos- 
sible to remove sand from the vessel which contains it, 
because the transfer requires the transfer of every particle, 
and each particle cannot be discriminated from every 
other. The simple fact involved in all these perplexities 
is the absence of any definite limit or unit in what we 
term infinitesimals. Nature, when she deals with the 
minute, — as in atoms — begins by defining her own unit. 

Zeno argued that the flying arrow does not move, be- 
cause at each instant it occupies some one space, and 
therefore is never passing from space to space. But here 
again there is no absolute instant. An instant, so called, 
involves a passage in time, and so in space; and this just 
as certainly as a longer period. The mind assumes a 
thing impossible, to wit, a period without dimensions, 
and then perplexes itself with the difficulties involved in 
the supposition. Philosophy should teach us not to try to 



20 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

make a process absolute, which, from the nature of the 
case, is, and must be, relative. 

§ 5. In opposition to this effort of the Eleatics to find 
permanency in simple being, there arose, in Ionic philos- 
ophy, the opinion of Heraclitus (460) of Ephesus. He- 
raclitus put the entire significance of things in move- 
ment, change. He regarded the world as an endless 
process. Fire, identical with the purest air and with 
life, is the primitive element. There is a twofold move- 
ment by which this supreme potency passes downward 
into water and earth and returns upward into air and 
life. Creation and destruction, life and death, are in- 
volved in these changes. The divine wisdom and power 
inhere in fire, and express themselves in these perpetual 
and conflicting transmutations. By thus emphasizing 
material, phenomenal changes, the world was resolved 
into a ceaseless and comparatively meaningless flux of 
events. Mind, movement, matter were merged in each 
other. The Eleatic school was in protest against this 
endless, restless, unsatisfying flow of phenomena into 
and out of each other. It strove after substantial being, 
something on which the mind could repose ; and it found 
it in the empty notion of being itself. 

At this point we may best apprehend a difference and 
a confusion of opinion which first appear in the strife of 
conceptions between the Eleatics and Heraclitus, and 
have often. since recurred. The Eleatics held that the 
thinkable, the conceivable, is the test of truth. That 
change is inconceivable, and therefore not real. Heracli- 
tus afifirmed that change is the all-inclusive fact ; that 
everything is and is not, is becoming. This has been 
interpreted to mean that both being and non-being are 
inseparably united in becoming. But each of these op- 



SENSATION AND REASON. 21 

posed conceptions is inadmissible. Being and becoming 
are not in rational conflict. Being and non-being, as 
applied to the same instant and act, are not reconcilable 
and are not united in becoming. 

We rationally accept a continuous period or continuous 
motion without the slightest sense of confusion or con- 
flict. When, however, we strive by an analytic movement 
of imagination — acting in the mode of the senses — to 
conceive the process of change, immediately our period 
drops into moments, our line into positions, minute parts, 
which may, however, as well be inches as points, and the 
movement from one to another becomes spasmodic, dis- 
continuous, inconceivable. The confusion arises from the 
inadequacy of sense-analysis, or, rather, its inapplicability 
to pure, rational forms. The senses deal only with dis- 
tinct, definite magnitudes. The periods and points which 
the imagination assumes are such magnitudes. Their ex- 
istence, side by side, instantly breaks up the continuity of 
the rational form. The apparent conflict lies between 
these two, an analysis resting on the limitations of the 
senses, and a rational conception in no way subject to 
them. Experience easily unites the two in one harmoni- 
ous fact, but thought is unable to identify them. We 
show great ingenuity in bringing forward this inadequacy 
of the senses, and great perversity in urging it as involv- 
ing a conflict of mental conceptions resting on equally 
immutable grounds. 

We assume an absolute point, a single moment, and 
proceed at once to abolish the supposition by showing 
how this point, this moment, stands apart from other 
points, other moments, with which it makes up the entire 
period, the entire line ; and how, therefore, a passage from 
one to another is disjointed by these divisions. But these 



22 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

divisions are assumed arbitrarily, and must be used in 
consistency with the assumption. We must not derive 
contradictions from a double and conflicting process. If 
we assume an absolute point, we must not interpret that 
point by the senses ; Ave must allow, in rational consist- 
ency, the moving body to rest in reference to it, other- 
wise it is not a point ; and we must not regard it as a por- 
tion, either continuous or discontinuous, with subsequent 
portions. If we violate these conditions, we render nuga- 
tory and misleading our first act. We treat an absolute, 
a rational, point as if it were a sensuous one. The nar- 
rowness of the space contemplated by the imagination 
does not in the least alter the relations to the whole. In 
a sensuous point, so-called, there is identically the same 
motion as in an inch. The discontinuous method of the 
imagination is simply an inadequate presentation of the 
perfect continuity of motion. Pure reason finds no diffi- 
culty with absolute continuity in space and in time. We 
might as well say that time is divided into seconds by the 
tick of a clock as that a line falls into parts by sensuous 
divisions. 

The notions of being and becoming are both applicable 
to things and acts, according to our method of regarding 
them, nor are the differences involved in them in any way 
conflicting. Sensuously we shall fail to divide the two 
perfectly, yet the two will give us firm conceptions in the 
rational process of comprehension. We can even say of 
becoming that it is a form of being, and of being that it 
is a single phase in becoming, and in both assertions the 
distinctness of the two notions remains. Being and be- 
coming interfuse each other, like cause and effect. 

We cannot fail to see how obedient were these first 
efforts at speculation to its permanent tendencies. The 



DEMOCRITUS — EMPEDOCLES. 23 

comprehension of all changes in some adequate and per- 
manent purpose still remains the goal of thought. The 
two elementary terms, the changeable and the unchange- 
able, still fiy apart. Some minds yield themselves readily 
to the mere flow of phenomena, and others refuse to be 
swept out on this endless tide. Rest is found only in 
well-directed motion ; in the permanent mind, expressing 
itself in the transient matter. The things seen are tem- 
poral ; the things unseen, eternal. 

§ 6. A later school, in sympathy with the external, 
materialistic tendencies of the Ionic philosophy, was that 
of the Atomists. Democritus (460) of Abdera, the pupil 
of Leucippus, was the representative of this type of 
thought. In opposition to the Eleatic school, Democritus 
affirmed both the full and the void, both being and non- 
being. His first terms in construction were atoms. These 
atoms are of the same quality, but differ from each other 
in form and size, and occasion further differences by diverse 
combinations. Round atoms constitute fire and spirit. 
All atoms were originally in motion downward, but falling 
with unequal velocity, they gave occasion to rotary motion, 
and to the union of like atoms with each other. Sensa- 
tions arise from efflux. Happiness is the motive of action. 

Without affirming distinctly the nature of matter or of 
mind, philosophers began at once to separate themselves 
from each other by the importance they attached to things 
or to ideas, to outward processes or to mental relations. 
Plato despised the works of Democritus. In our time 
these works have received marked attention from the 
Empirical school. There are some striking points of re- 
semblance between the conclusions of Democritus and 
those of modern inquiry. The atom was made the primi- 
tive term, but it was the physical, and not the chemical, 



24 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

atom, and its differences are the accidental ones of size, 
form, position. Motion also was used as the first con- 
structive agent ; though, in accordance with the knowledge 
of the times, the grounds of that motion were of a me- 
chanical order and vaguely conceived. 

As a cosmogony, the theory of Democritus involved 
terms of unusual significancy, and opened a fruitful di- 
rection of inquiry. Pushed farther than this, as giving 
the clew to the diversity of things, to psychology or to 
ontology, it had the obscurity and one-sidedness which 
so constantly accompany processes of thought that simply 
pursue an outward direction. 

§ 7. The Ionic school found its later development in 
Empedocles (500) of Agrigentum, and in Anaxagoras 
(500) of Clazomenae. Empedocles started with four ele- 
ments : fire, air, earth, and water. This conclusion was 
generally accepted for a long period. It best embraced 
all opinions, and men had not sufficient knowledge to 
break up such a sensuous group as earth, or to determine 
the nature of fire. In place of the hylozoism of the earlier 
Ionic philosophers, he accepted two agents, more spiritual 
than life : love and hate. Love is a uniting and hate is a 
dividing power. Each alternately prevails, and creation 
arises under their joint action. The predominance of 
either is the loss of special forms. The offices assigned 
these impulses by Empedocles implied a blended nature 
in them, both physical and spiritual. The theory did not 
rise to the height of the words, but the words sank to 
the wants of the theory. He regarded the material sub- 
ject to these forces as fixed in quantity and eternal in 
duration. The combinations of living things are for- 
tuitous, and they survive according to their aptitudes. 
Vision is the result of efflux. 



EMPEDOCLES — ANAXAGORAS. 25 

Empedocles had taken one step toward the spiritual 
world in his two constructive forces. Anaxagoras went 
much farther. He shifted his philosophy quite off the 
physical, Ionic basis. He put the divine mind — pure, 
passionless reason — in place of love and hate. He dis- 
tinguished clearly — the first to do so, according to Aris- 
totle — between matter and mind. He thus prepared the 
way for putting the questions of philgsophy in a new 
form. 

§ 8. The first period In Grecian philosophy offers, In an 
obscure way, the same discrepancy of opinion concerning 
the relation of physical terms and spiritual ones to each 
other which has reappeared in all periods as the one un- 
settled controversy. The different schools of philosophy 
were widely separated from each other by their natural- 
ism or their spiritualism. The disciples of Pythagoras 
and the Eleatics dealt wholly with mental terms. Ideas 
stood with them for the productive forces of the world. 
The notion was far more than the material in which it 
wrought. They failed, however, to discriminate between 
an idea and the intellectual personality to which It be- 
longs. 

The Ionic philosophers and the Atomists shaped their 
theories under physical forces. In connection with natu- 
ralism Empedocles accepted a spiritual expression for 
constructive forces ; and Anaxagoras passed on to a dis- 
tinct dualism. The four elements of Empedocles indi- 
cated a gain in thought, as compared with the single 
element of Thales. Differences were recognized in it 
at their true value, and also the hasty character of the 
previous generalization. The result of Inquiry was thus 
more analysis, more division, a multiplication of primitive 
terms, and, above all, a dim perception of the most funda- 



26 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PPIILOSOPHY. 

mental of distinctions, that between matter and mind. 
The tendency to generaHzation thus received a needed 
check. There was less of that surreptitious theory which 
explains things by obscuring the diversities between them, 
and by blending them together under conceptions only 
partially applicable. True philosophy demands, as the 
first essential of every process really explanatory, that it 
shall preserve the absolute intagrity of the facts under 
consideration, and interpret them under their precise 
shades of difference ; to first blur and mingle the colors 
of a painting, and then to refer them all to one shade, is 
not explanation. It is effacing the facts to be explained. 

When science carried our knowledge of elements be- 
yond the senses, not only was earth, as a primitive con- 
stituent, subdivided, but also the far more homogeneous 
substances, water and air. Our cosmic theories have now 
at their disposal more than sixty distinct elements, each 
with its own group of properties. Deeper than these 
first terms, now so greatly multiplied, our knowledge does 
not extend ; but, these being conceded, their activities 
toward each other, their general constructive relations, 
become a wonderful and inexhaustible subject of thought. 
We should mark the fact most emphatically, that in- 
quiry has not reduced elements, but steadily increased 
their number. Unity has not been found a unity of 
substances, but one of relations. 

The desire for simplicity is easily misleading. De- 
mocritus sought the diversity of atoms, not in original 
qualities, but in secondary relations, in size, weight, 
arrangement. Inquiry has not confirmed this suggestion. 
Primitive quality is the chief thing in the chemical atom. 
Size, weight, arrangement are relatively accidents to this 
inscrutable nature. They are not significant aside from 



TWO FORMS OF BEING. 2/ 

it. Atoms are not mere counters that owe their impor- 
tance to space relations. We can, in no case, interpret 
our space relations aside from the quality of the atom. 
The formal term in construction has not gained ground 
as contrasted with the inherent one. 

Neither naturalism nor spiritualism was successful in 
dealing separately Avith its own conceptions. Naturalism 
could not escape the aimless flow of phenomena, nor spirit- 
ualism unsubstantial ideas to which experience brought 
no sense of reality. The seen and the unseen, the sensu- 
ous and the spiritual, the physical substance and the con- 
structive energy, must find expression together, or we are 
without a real philosophy of life. They are infolded con- 
jointly in experience, and they must be unfolded coetane- 
ously in our interpretation of it. Very significant was 
the recognition by Heraclitus of the ceaseless flow of 
events, the unending changes by which things constantly 
pass into each other, obscuring all terms of difference. 
Equally important was the assertion by the Eleatics of 
fixed ideas of relation, which thread together these shift- 
ing impressions of the senses, and turn them into per- 
manent possessions of the mind. But the mobility and 
immobility of knowledge, of intellectual growth, can be 
found only in the union of the two, the sensuous impres- 
sion and the rational insight, in an ever-changeable, 
always-abiding universe. Two forms of being — physical 
being, with its untiring complexity, spiritual being, with 
its growing simplicity — these were the conclusions toward 
which these earliest efforts of thought were distinctly 
tending. 

The inherent order between the forms of philosophy is 
psychology, ontology, cosmology. We should first know 
the nature and scope of our powers of knowledge. This 



28 THE FIRST PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

would give us the distinct forms of being that are open to 
our discrimination. We should then be ready for the 
constructive relations which these separate entities sus- 
tain to each other in the world. As a matter of fact, 
philosophy does not arise in a philosophical way, but in 
one more consonant Avith our narrow experience and im- 
mature powers. Cosmology, the problem of the visible 
world, is first brought to our attention. With this effort 
to understand more widely the relations of things, there 
comes increasingly into the foreground a conviction of the 
very different kinds of being. This conviction, in turn, 
leads us to the deepest question of all, the scope and 
value of our own impressions. In this first period, a few 
happy suggestions, with more barren ones, were made in 
cosmology. There was also an increasing recognition of 
agencies and realities other than material ones. Life, affec- 
tions, ideas, the human spirit, the divine mind, all began 
to take part, though in an obscure and insufficient way, in 
the cosmic product. These results were slowly leading to 
psychology, though no question pertaining to it was dis- 
tinctly broached. 



CHAPTER II. 

SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. The second period Is much less divided In Its 
methods than the first period, and receives almost Its 
entire interest from three men, closely related to each 
other : Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. While Its leading 
discussions are still those of cosmology, the human, 
spiritual terms of thought are much more prominent in it 
than in the previous period. Things pertaining to man, 
logic, ethics, and social construction, are widely con- 
sidered. The -light begins to fall on the intellectual, as 
well as on the physical, side of the world ; and its relations 
are expounded as much by reasons as by causes. It was a 
period of great power, and concentration of power, and 
stands almost by Itself in this particular. This energy of 
thought arose rapidly, and was followed by a long, slow 
decline. The sudden putting forth of strength was start- 
ling. Rarely has the fruitfulness of the moral temper 
revealed itself more distinctly than in the teachings of 
Socrates. The springs of the new activity lay deep in the 
ethical constitution of man. 

The period was ushered in by the Sophists, who were 
the link between it and the times preceding ; the hinge 
on which philosophy. In Its present revolution, was made 
to turn. The Sophists were a class, a profession, rather 
than a school. They were the teachers of the time, and 



30 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

occupied in Greece much the same position as did the 
Rabbis in Judea. Socrates, hostile as he was to the 
spirit of the Sophists, was himself a Sophist ; as Christ 
was a Rabbi. The Sophists, as teachers of a higher order, 
were interested in philosophy as the most comprehensive 
form of knowledge ; though they desired, as rhetoricians, 
to make all knowledge minister to persuasion and furnish 
forth the skilful disputant. 

An era of active speculation in philosophy is almost 
uniformly followed by one of denial and skepticism. 
The conclusions reached are so partial, so extreme, so 
inadequate, so contradictory, that no sooner has the 
enthusiasm of pursuit subsided than criticism and unbe- 
lief set in. This result — which has now become so 
familiar to us — arose from the irreconcilable opinions of 
the earlier schools, took possession of many minds, and 
found general expression in the active leaders of thought. 

Instruction by the Sophists was not so much imparting 
to the young well-established principles, as it was the 
discussion of principles in an independent way. The 
skeptical temper was favored by the formal nature of 
rhetoric, held in high esteem as the chief branch of 
knowledge. Rhetoric makes knowledge a means rather 
than an end, and hence readily subordinates truth to its 
immediate uses. Belief is thus weakened, and the incon- 
sistencies and contradictions of opinion are as often dwelt 
on as its inherent soundness. A spirit is thus developed 
— one very apparent among the Sophists — of increasing 
subtilty and superficiality of thought. The desire to suc- 
ceed in one's immediate purposes, and to impart to others 
the trick of success, is very unfavorable to sound philoso- 
phy. It gave rise with the Sophists to an eristic logic 
whose sole purpose was to defeat an adversary ; this result 



SOPHISTS. 31 

being frequently reached by confusing the entire subject, 
and confounding all just opinions concerning it. 

The Sophists thus stood for a transitional period, one 
of skepticism, superficiality, and dishonesty; all knowl- 
edge was regarded as relative, tainted by a personal 
quality. Opinions, it was said, are many, diverse, and 
contradictory. These opposed statements are all alike 
defensible. The Sophists professed the art of proving, 
and teaching others to prove, any proposition that might 
be offered to them. The Sophists thus became proficients 
in all the sophisms of logic, and these were indistinguish- 
able, for the time being, from logic itself. They relied on 
the inexhaustible confusion in the meaning of words, and 
added to it all the ambiguities and errors of combination. 
One can learn nothing, they said. He cannot learn what 
he already knows. He cannot seek what he does not 
know. Jones is not Smith. But Smith is a man ; there- 
fore Jones is not a man. 

Rhetoric, formal as it is, can only rest securely on the 
truth. When we lose our confidence in truth we lose our 
interest in the methods of establishing it, and in persua- 
sion by means of it. We must have some faith in the 
intrinsic value of an opinion, or we can maintain neither 
our regard for it nor for the manner of enforcing it. Lan- 
guage slowly sinks to the level of the sensuous impres- 
sions by which a brute is governed ; indeed, falls quite 
below them in the faintness and barrenness of its images. 
Morality and religion are utterly impoverished by this 
flow of facile and futile phraseology. Truth, like Noah's 
dove, spreading its wings over the weltering deluge of 
words, finds no place for the sole of its foot. It was the 
reaction of deeper, more spiritual impulses, that aroused 
Socrates against the entire sophistical method. It was 



32 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

the urgent need of exact definition and well-defined 
methods in reasoning, that stimulated Aristotle to that 
great achievement, the construction of a logic that should 
have, in its conclusions, the certainty of mathematical 
truth. 

§ 2. Protagoras (490) of Abdera, who taught rhetoric at 
Athens, was one of the more conspicuous of the Sophists, 
and may well have contributed his share toward calling 
out that deeper insight which belonged to Socrates. He 
regarded man as the measure of all things. He accepted 
the extreme view of the naturalists, that all things are 
phenomenal and in perpetual flow. The sensuous ele- 
ments are thus uppermost, and things are what they 
appear to be to each man ; nothing more. The existence 
of the gods is uncertain. Thus early did naturalism show 
the inevitable tendency which has been present with it in 
every phase of development to weaken the inner hold of 
the mind on truth. While it has had many things to 
teach, even more things than spiritualism, it has struck 
fatal blows at that faith of the mind in its own processes 
which constitutes the ultimate value of truth, whether it 
pertains to sensuous or to spiritual things. 

Gorgias (427) of Sicily was a distinguished Sophist. 
His leading assertions were : Nothing is. If anything 
were, we could not know it. If anything were, and we 
knew it, we could not communicate our knowledge. This 
helplessness attends on knowledge, so-called, as simply 
sensuous impressions, unable at any point to transcend 
themselves. Yet the very theory contradicts itself in its 
own expression. It affirms negatively, and forgets that 
this carries with it the power of affirmation. The one 
and the many he regarded as alike impossible. The one 
cannot exist without parts. The many, the parts, cannot 



SOCRATES. 33 

exist without unity. Plato said of him : *' He valued ap- 
pearances more than truth ; made the little seem large, 
and the large seem little." 

Thus method, by becoming everything, became noth- 
ing, and unbelief was lost amid its own negations. The 
insight of the mind, instead of being occupied with harmo- 
nizing the rational and sensuous terms of knowledge, was 
employed in entangling them more and more. This 
skepticism could have carried with it no force, had it not 
been for the unexpended energy of previous belief ; this 
momentum it soon exhausted, and then fell dead under 
the abiding opprobrium of sophistry. Its astuteness and 
the applause attendant on its immediate success did not 
save it from its own inherent aimlessness and worthless- 
ness. 

§ 3. Socrates (469), whose life was spent at Athens, 
was animated more by an ethical than by a speculative 
impulse. He rose against the current lightness, nimble- 
ness, and dishonesty of thought, in defence of the integ- 
rity of knowledge, the soundness of human faculties, the 
value of life. Truthfulness, trustfulness, obedience, and 
spiritual acquisition are the fundamental temper of 
morals. He confronted the loose unbelief of the Soph- 
ists, and sought, by discussion in the market and the 
gymnasium, to awaken in the young men of Athens a 
more sincere disposition, and to secure more just forms 
of thought. The Socratic method of question and answer 
was well fitted to dissipate the sophisms of the Sophists. 
These were made possible chiefly by the want of adequate 
definitions, of a settled relation of terms, and of insight 
into real connections. In the absence of a formal logic, 
these errors were best exposed by an analysis of the con- 
ceptions involved, the listeners being compelled to share 
3 



34 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

and approve the progress of the thought by taking part 
in it. 

As the conceptions under consideration were mostly 
those of the intellectual, ethical world, and not of physi- 
cal facts, the discussion involved an appeal to general ex- 
perience, ending in appropriate definition. The meaning 
of the words employed, and their fitting use in a specific 
argument, were settled by an inquiry into the ideas which 
lay back of them in the various forms of speech. When 
the premises involved were thus brought to a clear and 
common expression, the conclusions that followed from 
them became firm and harmonious. Belief was awakened 
afresh in the mind. This method was an immediate, prac- 
tical substitute for the complete, formal logic of Aristotle. 

Knowledge was with Socrates the basis of morality. 
Virtue is insight in questions of conduct. His conception 
is at one with that of Proverbs. Obedience is wisdom, 
and disobedience folly. To see the true and the good is 
necessarily to love them. The good is found in a cor- 
rect vision of spiritual things and conformity to it. There 
went, as was natural, with this vigorous, ethical temper, a 
belief in God and in immortality. A vision of the scope 
and completeness of the laws of conduct is a revelation 
of God, and an assurance of the continuity of life. The 
** Demonic Sign " of Socrates may well be regarded as 
a personal form of the doctrine of the spirit of truth, a 
revelation "in the mind by suffused light and pulsations 
of light of the spiritual significance of events ; the play of 
lightning on a wide and heated intellectual horizon. 

§ 4. On the death of Socrates his disciples were dis- 
persed and were divided in belief. Their points of di- 
vision were chiefly ethical, and gave occasion to the two 
later leading schools of morality. Euclid retired to Meg- 



ANTISTHENES — DIOGENES. 35 

ara. He united the Socratic idea of good with the 
Eleatic idea of being. Thus the good became to him 
the only permanent being, God ; while sensations were 
the ever-changeable terms of life. 

Socrates had freely accepted pleasure as a constituent 
in a perfect life, and had simply emphasized the wise 
mastery of the mind over it. These two terms, happiness 
and rational oversight, maintained both in theory and in 
practice with so much difficulty in wise harmony, were 
now separated by the disciples of Socrates. Antisthenes, 
who followed Socrates as a teacher at Athens, brought 
the authority of virtue into the foreground. Virtue was 
with him the only good. Enjoyment, as an end, is an 
evil. This doctrine was in keeping with the difficulty of 
the social position in which the followers of Socrates found 
themselves. The assertion of an inflexible truth gains 
somewhat in harshness by virtue of the resistance it is 
compelled to encounter. This severe form of belief gave 
occasion to a decidedly ascetic temper. It found a repre- 
sentative in Diogenes of Sinope, who is for most associ- 
ated with the tub in which he is said to have dwelt at 
Corinth. His morality seems to have been sincere, but 
of that extreme temper which leads one to throw aside 
the enjoyments and amenities of life rather than to be at 
the labor of purifying them. The beautiful accompani- 
ments of life are thus shrivelled up in a fierce passion for 
life itself. This severe spirit, which led this school to fall 
out with the world, gave occasion to the designation of 
Cynics. 

The Cyrenian school, established by Aristippus at 
Cyrene, took the other half of the doctrine of Socrates, 
and made pleasure the end of life. This pleasure was 
not lawless pleasure, but a well-ordered enjoyment of the 



36 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

world. These two forms of ethical theory are deeply 
implanted in the events of life and in the constitution of 
the mind, and hence have always played a leading part in 
theories of morals. Not often have there been found that 
balance of thought, that harmony of constitution, that 
fortunate consilience of circumstances which have enabled 
the philosopher and moralist to unite the two as fitting 
outward expression of an inwardly vigorous life. These 
two forms of belief were taken up and fully expanded by 
the Stoics and the Epicureans. 

§ 5. The great disciple of Socrates and of Euclid was 
Plato (427). It is through him and Xenophon that we 
chiefly have access to Socrates. He taught for a long 
period at Athens, in the garden of Academus, and so 
founded the school of the Academy. It is not easy to 
point out another who has had an equal influence over 
the forms of philosophy with that exerted by Plato. 
Whomsoever we mention, there will be doubt attached to 
the opinion. He has been a supreme presence from his 
own time onward in the spiritualistic regions of thought. 
There has been no one, of an idealistic tendency, who has 
not caught sight of Plato, near at hand or remote, and 
felt the inspiration of his great spirit. 

Plato regarded matter as eternal, without qualities, the 
stuff out of which the world is made. The world is 
the product of changes allied to those of growth. God, 
the World-builder, formed the world-soul out of two ele- 
ments — the one immutable, the other mutable. These 
two were united into an intermediate substance, and the 
three, again united, became the world-soul. Matter was 
first shaped into mathematical forms, and afterward, pass- 
ing into its present phases, was united to the soul of the 
world as its body. 



PLATO. 37 

The soul of man was also made of two elements, the 
superior element being the instrument of rational cogni- 
tion, and the inferior of sensuous perception. In man 
there are two subordinate souls, one of appetite and one 
of courage. The soul of the world and the soul of man 
are intermediate agents between pure ideas and matter. 

The point most central in the cosmogony of Plato was 
that of ideas. The position he gave to ideas makes his 
whole scheme, notwithstanding the intellectual elements 
it contains, one of cosmology. According to it there are 
two terms in the universe, the inner and the outer, the 
immutable and the mutable, pure being and phenomena. 
Ideas are the inner, immutable, eternal, creative essences. 
The idea is not found in individual objects that arise 
under it, but has a distinct prior existence. These ob- 
jects are its changeable, sensuous expression. 

This doctrine of ideas is allied to the Eleatic notion 
of being, but has this decisive advantage, that, in the 
diversity of ideas, it gives a basis for the variety of the 
world. But this advantage is balanced by the confusion 
which arises between a wider generalization and the nar- 
rower ones which it contains. Socrates had directed the 
attention of his disciples to the definitions — concepts — 
which lie back of general terms. The object of his 
inquiry was to reduce these concepts to a coherent, 
general, and permanent form. Plato, in furtherance of a 
like purpose, transformed them into realities, made them 
the productive energies of the world. He hypostatized 
the products of the mind, and, to a degree, put them in 
place of mind. The scheme is thoroughly idealistic in its 
tendency, carries creation over to a movement of imma- 
terial ideas, and is allied, in inner force, to the idealism of 
German philosophy. The philosophy, as presented by 



38 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

Plato, possessed many crude features, and called for much 
elaboration to bring it into consistency with itself. If 
ideas, represented by the concepts which lie back of 
classes, are to have eternal, substantial — substantial as 
opposed to phenomenal — existence, classification ceases to 
be a formal combination of the objects under considera- 
tion, adjustable to the immediate uses of mind, and be- 
comes an inquiry into absolute, ultimate forms of being. 
As, however, we arrive at these eternal essences no other- 
wise than by our arrangement of things, acts, qualities, 
relations, into classes, and as these are changeable, in- 
numerable, and overlap each other in every variety of 
way, the essences present to us in them present a most 
confused assemblage of energies, whose precise work and 
relative work we are utterly unable to define. This has 
been found true in connection with the highest idea of 
all, the good, identified by Plato with God. How is this 
identification possible ? What relation has this idea to 
other ideas? To preserve the supreme creative energy 
of God, this idea ought not only to be permanent, but 
preeminent, pervasive, giving limit and direction to all 
other ideas. It ought to be personal. What Plato taught 
on this subject is under dispute. Doubtless, the relation 
of ideas as ultimate essences to each other and to a har- 
monious creative act was not fully wrought out by him. 

That Plato was aware of this difficulty and not able to 
meet it, is seen in the dialogue Parmenides : '* I sometimes 
get disturbed and begin to think that there is nothing — 
as hair, mud, dirt — without an idea ; but then I am afraid 
that I may fall into a bottomless pit of nonsense and 
perish ; and so I return to the ideas of which I was just 
speaking — the just, the beautiful, and the good — and 
occupy myself with them." The feeling here expressed. 



PLATO. 39 

is most natural and just, when we consider the many 
restricted, unrelated, and overlapping qualities expressed 
in general terms, and the innumerable abstract relations 
between things which they indicate. Nothing but con- 
fusion can arise in thought from an indiscriminate attach- 
ment of all these terms to eternal entities. Plato's phi- 
losophy, however, subserved the great purpose of raising 
that most fruitful of questions, which has occupied so 
many centuries in its discussion, the nature of general 
terms. On the one hand, it has led to such inquiries in 
science as the nature of species, and, on the other, in 
philosophy, to the separation of general ideas into those 
which are the product of generalization and those which 
express primitive formal elements. 

It is not these innumerable interior criticisms that are 
of most moment in considering a comprehensive philos- 
ophy like that of Plato. They may serve to define the 
scope and harmony of thought which belonged to its 
author, but do not determine its position in the general 
development of truth. 

The analysis implied in this construction of a universe 
by virtue of ideas — this dialectic of Plato — was very in- 
adequate, yet wholly in the right direction. Though 
mind and matter, ideas and the products that arise under 
them, have gained a footing with him as fundamentally 
diverse, neither is fully apprehended in itself or assigned a 
true position. Matter is mere stuff ; something which is 
nothing, but out of which all things can be formed. This 
conclusion is itself unintelligible as well as aside from all 
the facts of experience. The matter recognized by Plato 
is not at all the matter we know, full of the most diverse 
and subtile powers. 

The creative energy which is operative in this formless 



I 



40 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

mass is not so much mind as ideas. These ideas are the 
personified products of an intellectual imagination, and 
find no counterparts in a wise, empirical analysis of the 
world. They are the fruits of mind put in the place of 
mind itself. There are three grades or forms of real- 
ity, the reality of continuous being — matter, mind ; the 
reality of phenomenal being — the transient states and 
acts of matter and mind ; and the reality of the formal 
elements which belong to these states of matter and mind 
— space, time, consciousness. Ideas in reference to mind 
have only phenomenal being ; in reference to states of 
matter and mind, only formal being. In no case are they 
entities in the higher force of the word. This formal 
being is associated with the phenomenal being which 
accompanies it. Space or causation is not a something 
beyond the facts which arise under it, but the intellectual 
form-element by which alone the facts present them- 
selves. 

Plato hypostatizes ideas and assigns them real being — 
being of the highest order. This act of the imagination 
finds no confirmation in experience, is in no way intelli- 
gible or explanatory. Ideas, so used, begin at once to 
take on the attributes of personality, to the limitation or 
loss of personality itself. So personified, they must find 
interpretation under terms of mind, as the mind of man 
is the only empirical form of personality within the cir- 
cuit of our knowledge. This passage of being, power, 
creation, over from mind to ideas, the phenomena of 
mind, from reason to the relations which reason carries 
with it, is no more sound as a philosophy of being than is 
a reference of all knowledge to a sensuous flow of phe- 
nomena in the physical world. It is, indeed, a far higher 
and more just product of thought, as it chooses more,- 

i 



PLATO. 41 

wisely between the two classes of phenomena, mental and 
physical, in determining the nature of truth. In either 
case, however, the forms of substantial being given in 
experience are set aside, and phenomenal being is sub- 
stituted for them. In the system of Plato, mental phe- 
nomena, as ruling energies, take the place of physical 
phenomena, which in their variableness and changeable- 
ness had colored the scepticism of the Sophist. Plato 
did not, in hypostatizing ideas, abandon matter, but he 
reduced it to the lowest expression — world-stufT. The 
earth-soul which he gives the world allies his opinion to 
hylozoism. 

Plato, in giving to ideas an objective reality, assimilates 
the action of the mind in thought to its action in percep- 
tion. The object of its contemplation, as, for example, 
the good, exists prior to its discernment and indepen- 
dently of it. In this view, reason is not assigned its true 
power. The forms of reason, its ruling ideas, inhere in 
reason itself, and are incidents of its own activity. The 
good is not something prior to moral insight, it belongs to 
rational, ethical action as its inner law. It is discerned 
by the reason as a governing idea within itself of its 
own activity. The eternity of ideas, in the philosophy 
of Plato, wholly confounds the relation of reason, human 
and divine, to the world of order. It does not induce 
that order, it is not its source, but at best only perceives 
it. Thus reason is already enveloped in relations which 
it in no way institutes. It is not ultimate as a creative 
agent. 

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle each made his own con- 
tribution to the refutation of the Sophists and to restor- 
ing the foundations of truth. The permanent and the 
changeable elements in knowledge are represented by 



42 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

intellectual relations and sensuous appearances. The 
Sophists were able to bring to our impressions a sense of 
confusion and contradiction by laying emphasis on the 
shifting phases of our sensible experience. These vari- 
able facts of the senses are translated by us into intellect- 
ual relations, contained in general terms. Socrates sought 
to bring out the explicit and universal element in these 
words by which we identify intellectual connections. 
Plato, magnifying knowledge, put back of these general 
terms, one and all, an independent, permanent form of 
being. Herein he raised the question of innate ideas, or 
ideas prior to experience. It was a long time, however, 
before these general notions were sharply discriminated 
into their two classes — those due to generalization, and 
those which, as primitive form-elements of the reason, 
accompany all its activity — and the discussion of origin 
confined to the latter division. This assertion of Plato 
opened the way for later inquiry, but growing analysis 
constantly changed the points of attack and defence. 
Those who regard philosophy as a fruitless repetition of 
the same differences of opinion, either do not recognize 
the continual movement which has accompanied this dis- 
cussion of ideas, or do not understand its importance. 

The mistake involved in the first step in the philoso- 
phy of Plato became more and more apparent in a dis- 
position to regain the lost ground by giving to ideas 
increasingly- a personal character, and by identifying the 
highest idea, that of Good, with God. This is an error of 
method which has constantly perplexed philosophy-— the 
institution of an inadequate distinction, and then trying 
to make it firm by drawing back to the notion so sepa- 
rated the very qualities from which it has been divided. 
Thus, the ideas of Plato, which were to rule mind, took 



PLATO. 43 

to themselves the attributes of mind ; and thus, also, in 
empiricism, matter, cut apart from intellectual being, and 
made the primary cause of events, comes more and more 
to include in itself mental quality. 

We have in the philosophy of Plato an early example 
of what has often been so unsuccessfully tried — the intro- 
duction of an intermediate term between two diverse 
forms of being as a condition of reconciliation. Thus, 
the soul of the world and the soul of man are so made up 
of commingled elements as to be able to act intermedi- 
ately between the material world and the world of pure 
ideas. Explanations of the interaction of mind and mat- 
ter, by the intervention of some third thing, are of a me- 
chanical order, give no real light, and assume a difificulty 
to exist where there is no real difficulty. Interactions, in 
their ultimate forms, are, from the nature of the case, 
simple and primary terms of thought through our entire 
experience, whether they lie between matter and matter, 
matter and mind, or mind and mind. As simple terms 
they are unintelligible by any steps of analysis. 

It is the incidents rather than the elaborated substance 
of the philosophy of Plato that have given it its great 
value with subsequent thinkers. The fellowship of the 
mind with truth through permanent ideas, the construct- 
ive force of ideas — ideas being allowed to sink to their 
true position as form-elements of the reason — in all the 
processes of thought, the communicability of mind with 
mind through the perfect medium of knowledge, the uni- 
versal swallowing up the particular in the eternal sweep of 
thought, the growing supremacy of a Personal Reason in 
the world, are all positions of profound inspiration. Re- 
ceiving the modifications which they readily accept, they 
become the cardinal truths of psychology and ontology. 



44 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

While movement is not wholly, as Plato presents it, 
from the universal to the particular, from the idea to the 
product included under it, yet the universal is ever the 
luminous element in particulars, and particulars are only 
stimulating as, by intellectual combination, they flow 
into the universal — the enveloping atmosphere of all 
revelation. 

§ 6. The ethical and spiritual impulse in Plato was in 
every way worthy of a disciple of Socrates. A philoso- 
phy thus drawn out in antagonism to the slipping, change- 
able hold of the Sophists on truth was full of insight and 
trustfulness. Virtue, with it, rests on knowledge, and is 
to be desired for its own sake. Virtue is the harmony of 
our nature with itself, and allies us to God. The four 
cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and 
justice. The state is supreme. The individual holds his 
possessions in subordination to it. Personal life is de- 
pendent on this superior life and wrapped up in it. It 
was under this theory that the Greeks constructed the 
state, and Plato accepted it. The worst features in his 
morality are explained by it, a community of wives, an 
exposure of infants, and slavery. They were offerings 
made to the theoretical expansion of a ruling principle not 
yet corrected by the counter principle of individual life. 

The priority of the state, in which justice is the great, 
constructive idea, gave this virtue with the ancient world 
a supreme position. By justice in the state Plato under- 
stood the subordination of all interests and of all persons, 
each in his own rank, to the commonwealth. Justice thus 
becomes the simple, direct administration of wise law, 
irrespective of the private interests that may stand in its 
way. This virtue he transferred to the individual by 
likening each man to a little kingdom, calling for a similar 



PLATO — ETHICS. 45 

subordination of parts and harmony of control. Justice, 
as a personal virtue, stands for self-government. Self- 
control, or justice, is thus the summation of many virtues. 
The word and the idea arose in connection with the rela- 
tions of men to each other in society and the state, and 
they have settled down around this centre till they stand 
for a full recognition of the claims of others upon us 
under our common life. In this more restricted sense, 
justice is an essential virtue, but by no means the chief 
virtue. It is fundamental in morals only, because, as a 
somewhat barren subsoil, it underlies the fruitful fields of 
spiritual life. Love and the higher affections flourish 
beyond and above it. 

The ethics both of Plato and Aristotle show how im- 
possible it is for the largest intellects to develop the rela- 
tions of society very much in advance of those with which 
they are familiar. Insight into the practical application 
of moral principles can only be called out and corrected 
empirically. It is between man and man, man and soci- 
ety, that these principles apply, and there we must study 
them under all the varied circumstances which surround 
them in the actual progress of the world. The customs 
of any one time or community have grown up in direct 
adaptation to existing conditions, and are, in part, their 
natural products. Though there may be in these cus- 
toms perverse and oppressive features, there is also, in 
the circumstances out of which they have grown and 
which they in turn nourish, much to justify them. They 
often do not admit of sudden and extended change. The 
moralist, therefore, finds himself in the midst of social 
conditions and dependencies which he may improve, but 
cannot escape. He is liable to regard them as more 
permanent than they really are. He must be possessed 



46 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

of a vigorous imagination in spiritual things, if he can 
reconstruct at once and fully all the details of life as 
he meets them in the ruling forces and accidental forms 
about him. So transcendent an ideal, when reached, seems 
wholly out of connection with the facts to which it per- 
tains. The social good discloses itself only in connection 
with the slow gradations of growth by which we creep 
up toward it. If we find in a community slavery and the 
subjection of women, there are also present many ugly 
facts which give color to these bad relations. There 
must be reciprocity between the principles that are 
current among men and the character of those whom 
they knit together. The ideal principle is, therefore, con- 
stantly humiliated by the practice with which it is asso- 
ciated ; the practice hides the scope and beauty of the 
principle, and renders it, for the time being, inapplicable, 
or even unintelligible. Insight that is empirical is thus 
led to interpret principles too narrowly, by virtue of the 
constraint of the circumstances under which they are 
applied ; and insight that is theoretical becomes extrava- 
gant in its use of principles, and so reflects discredit upon 
them. The moral life, in its insights and its actions, — for 
the two are inseparable — is unfolded collectively by the 
growth of society, where its terms of construction exist 
and are slowly laid open in their infinite variety and force. 
Having once made a step in social edification, we bestow 
sharp criticism on those who failed to see its fitness, 
though we ourselves may be quite blind in regard to the 
changes still before us. Nothing seems more difficult for 
men to conceive than the readjustments, the spiritual and 
the formal transformations, which must accompany the 
growth of society, and, therefore, to discern the exact 
time at which events are ripening for the transition. 



PLATO— ETHICS. 47 

Prior to any progressive movement it is easy to argue 
against it, because of the maladjustments it seems about 
to occasion ; but when the eventful moment is present, 
there begins to be a shifting of thought and action in 
many directions at once. Both Plato and Aristotle, great 
as was their intellectual strength, were too much enclosed 
in existing conditions, were too low down in the mist of 
the valley, to see the heights of moral revelation that lay 
in clear, but remote, sunshine on the horizon. This fail- 
ure must, from the nature of the case, ever be present 
with us in one degree or another. We are built up in the 
moral world in wide plateaus and mountain ranges only 
in connection with great masses, and as the consummation 
of protracted processes. 

Plato held that the Idea of the Good, God, was the su- 
preme creative idea, and that man was immortal from the 
indestructible nature of the soul. This necessary dura- 
tion of the spirit carried with it previous existence as well 
as future life ; and this double fact was presented under 
the form of metempsychosis. Life offers a wide range to 
living things. Each portion of it may be to the human 
spirit a discipline in the line of reward and punishment, 
and lead to a form superior or inferior to itself. Persist- 
ence in virtue finally frees the soul from the body, and 
raises it to the condition of the gods. The one funda- 
mental principle, which gives coherence and value to this 
speculation, is the moral life it includes and the slow de- 
velopment incident to that life. The exact terms under 
which this cardinal truth is enforced are of far less 
moment than the truth itself. The fact that man has 
so often turned to the doctrine of metempsychosis as 
an explanation of moral phenomena, shows that in the 
narrow range of our vision it offers one of the most 



48 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

obvious ways in which our moral Hfe can be carried be- 
yond the close limits of experience in which we find it. 

Plato based his argument for immortality on fanciful 
conceptions of the nature of the soul, conceptions some- 
what akin to those notions of perfection which were 
attached to certain mathematical figures. An intellectual 
imagination easily gives some new significance to the 
simple data with which we have to deal in experience. 

The disciples of Plato were quite overshadowed by the 
genius of their master. He seemed to have exhausted 
the world of thought. The Academy suffered successive 
minor divisions, and in no branch of it attained any 
permanent distinction till the rise, in the next period, of 
Neo-Platonism. While the philosophy of Plato lacked the 
correction incident to wide knowledge, and the restraint 
due to the study of things, it held, in an inexhaustible 
degree, the stimulus of bold, strong, penetrative thought. 

§ 7. Aristotle (384) of Stagira, a man of the same im- 
perial power as Plato, was neither quite his pupil nor 
quite his rival. He was an independent worker under 
him and after him. He was, during twenty years, in the 
school of Plato, and for three years the tutor of Alexan- 
der. Alexander, with his large and ill-ordered powers, thus 
passed under and out of the shadow of the three great 
minds of his period. Intellectual and social changes, 
offered in two distinct forms, and each form of the widest 
range, stand contrasted in the lives of Alexander and 
Aristotle. The conquests of Alexander were effective 
and permanent forces in civilization ; but Alexander was 
in them a comparatively mechanical factor. The works 
of Aristotle became a yet more active and enduring agent 
in civilization, and the mind of Aristotle was ever and 
everywhere their clear, luminous centre. 



ARISTOTLE. 49 

Aristotle taught twelve years at Athens, in the Lyceum, 
a place on the Ilissus. His disciples, accustomed to 
walk in discussion with their master backward and for- 
ward across the narrow area, were termed Peripatetics ; a 
title they vindicated on the intellectual side by traversing 
under his eye the widest ranges of thought. 

Aristotle united his theories much more closely to the 
facts before him than did Plato. He was an earnest 
student of physics and natural science. He was the son 
of a physician, a profession which has been especially 
associated with an empirical tendency. His notion of 
ideas was quite distinct from that of Plato. He believed 
in one immaterial essence, form-principle — form-giving 
principle — the absolute Spirit, God. The other essences, 
form-principles, inhere in matter, and are inseparable 
from it. Matter does not exist apart from them, nor 
they apart from matter. Matter is, in reference to them, 
the potentiality, the possibility, of being ; they, in refer- 
ence to matter, are its informing, ruling ideas. The signifi- 
cance of things is found in these ideas ; but true ideas 
are not to be arrived at hastily in thought, but by careful 
inquiry and wise classification. They thus constitute the 
universal, the truly significant, forces in particulars. 

He regarded matter, not altogether pliant to ideas, 
as a source of imperfection. This opinion is, however, 
hardly in keeping with the nature of matter, defined by 
him as pure potentiality. Matter, in order to embarrass 
a constructive movement, must be endowed with some 
refractory qualities of its own. His scheme of cosmology 
is much more self-consistent and workable than that of 
Plato, and much nearer later results in philosophy. He 
also enforced the very important principle of approach- 
ing ideas by a thorough knowledge of things. The idea 



50 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

is the meaning of the thing ; the thing always exists in a 
significant form, holds within it an idea. The world is 
thus the language, the embodiment, of ideas. Motion, 
change, construction, involves, as empirically interpreted, 
three things : that which is moved (changed), that which 
is moved and itself moves, and, inferentially, that which 
moves and is not itself moved. Motion or change in- 
cludes three particulars : quantitative motion, qualitative 
motion, and motion in space. That which moves and is 
not itself moved is Pure Spirit, absolutely perfect, loved 
of all. 

The universe includes four principles : the form-prin- 
ciple, the material principle, efficient cause, final cause. 
The form-principle and material principle exist together 
in the individual. Substantial being belongs only to the 
particular. Efficient causes and final causes coexist in 
living things, and in their perfect form in God. Here we 
have distinctly recognized, in their own diverse relations, 
the two terms of cosmic construction, matter and mind, 
forces and powers. Nearly as the philosophy of Aristotle 
approaches the realism of our time, it differs from it in 
giving to the idea, the form-principle, everywhere, even 
in the inorganic world, that distinct, though not separate, 
existence which is now associated with life, as a plastic 
power ; or with spirit, as a rational presence. To the 
mind of Aristotle the organic and inorganic worlds were 
alike, in each containing, in their distinct species, equally 
distinct constructive ideas. Matter, as simple potential- 
ity, was, in each case, to the form-principle what mat- 
ter is, under the modern conception, with its properties 
and forces, to the principle of life — the means by which 
a distinct agent is reaching its ends. Aristotle regarded 
life simply as a fuller form-principle, involving at once 



ARISTOTLE. 5 1 

form and moving cause. Man is possessed of body, 
soul, and spirit. Higher terms are added to lower ones. 
The soul stands for life, and the spirit for the rational 
principle. Our knowledge of principles is an insight of 
reason. It was hardly possible to have hit on the relation 
of form-principles to matter, till, by chemical analysis, 
the nature of matter was better understood. Matter 
offers itself as material to all our mechanical processes. 
It was natural to conceive it in a similar relation to form- 
principles everywhere, till the discovery was reached that 
it itself is made up of constructive activities of various 
orders and groups, that its properties and substance are 
one and the same. Many minds still find difficulty in 
dismissing the notion of dead centres, a kind of stuff 
which gives substantial being to things. 

Aristotle regarded space as limited, and time as un- 
limited. The limitation of space was reached by consid- 
ering it as 2. plenum, and directing attention to that with 
which it is. filled. Space expresses the bounds of mate- 
rial things. He added to the four elements generally 
accepted, ether, filling celestial spaces. Ether is the su- 
preme element, the quinta essentia, the quintessence. To 
it circular motion is native. 

§ 8. In morals, as elsewhere, Aristotle felt strongly, and, 
on the whole, beneficently, the empirical tendency. The 
end of human effort is happiness. But happiness is the 
fruit of virtue, and virtue is action conformed to reason. 
Reason is the proper sovereign of the soul. The leading 
practical principle with which Aristotle would guide action 
is that of the golden mean. Vice is of the nature of 
excess, virtue of the nature of moderation. The balance 
and soundness of the mind are apparent in its power to 
combine and reconcile opposite tendencies. 



52 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

Justice held the same high position with him as with 
Plato, and for a like reason. Government is the supreme 
idea with them both, and justice stands for well-ordered 
control both in the state and in the individual. While 
the ethical opinions of Aristotle are shaped under a 
strong empirical tendency, he admits, in what he terms 
dianoetic virtue, elements which stand in harmony with 
intuitive morals. This virtue is the exercise of the reason 
in right relation to other powers. If the mind is able 
to discern the correct positions and proportions of its 
powers, and finds its highest pleasure, as Aristotle presents 
the case, in obedience to this law of its being, we therein 
have a truth which leads directly to intuitive ethics. 

We easily err in supposing earlier discussions nearer 
in thought to later ones than they really are. These dis- 
cussions indicate directions, but the later positions taken 
in them were not as yet distinctly before the mind. The 
ethical temper of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics 
was that which is now reproduced as intuitionalism. 
While, in the scheme of Aristotle, happiness was regarded 
as the supreme end of action, it was a happiness that 
owed its significance to the rational elements it contained. 
The question had not been distinctly put by him, 
whether the rational law, as a law, is prior in authority 
to the happiness which attends on obedience to it ; or 
whether this happiness is itself the ground of this 
value? whether rational law or rational pleasure lies 
deepest in our ethical constitution? If this question had 
been asked Aristotle, he would have been compelled, by 
the whole tendency of his philosophy, to give the law of 
reason, disclosed to reason itself, the foreground. This 
supremacy of law is involved in the ethics of Plato and of 
the Stoics. The paradoxes of the Stoics imply it. Noth- 



ARISTOTLE — ETHICS. 53 

ing, according to them, is contrary to the will of a good 
man. That is, the sense of law and just obedience to it 
rise above all consequences. So the assertion that pain is 
no evil, and that the strength of virtue is expressed in 
apathy, both indicate this supreme sense of law. The 
temper of the Stoic was obedience of the soul, exacted by 
the soul itself ; as opposed to the temper of the Epicu- 
rean, which was a pursuit of happiness. Though the 
doctrine of Aristotle seems to occupy a middle ground, 
its deeper affiliations, this middle ground being swept 
away, are found with the supremacy of rational law, in 
its most explicit statement, the intuitionalism of our 
time. If happiness is held fast as the supreme end, the 
notion of law must be given up, and all impulses — ethical 
impulses as well as others — be treated as primitive consti- 
tutional tendencies, sensibilities, under which we enter on 
this pursuit of pleasure. Aristotle's opinion was in disa- 
greement with itself. It has been the result of more recent 
discussions in ethics to disclose and escape this collision 
of conflicting ideas ; either to make the law of right sim- 
ply an evolution of the pleasure-seeking impulses, or to 
regard it as a primitive product of rational insight and 
oversight, ripened and expanded within itself under ex- 
perience, and, as the result of its own supremacy, the 
crowning condition of pleasure. 

The priority of the state is strongly conceived by 
Aristotle. The idea was thoroughly wrought into the 
temper and practice of his time. In the rhythm of 
progress it was, as contrasted with individuation, justly 
uppermost. It also gives bold expression to that unde- 
niable fact that individual development must be the prod- 
uct of the joint social life. No matter, however, what 
the particular form of government may be, this idea of 



54 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

the superiority of the state to those subject to it must give 
rise to tyranny. A democracy, Hke that at Athens, may 
very readily be associated with a flagrant disregard of the 
rights of the individual. While we cannot pass over to 
the reactionary doctrine of inalienable rights, expressed 
in our own Declaration of Independence, the individual, 
the typical individual, who stands for every citizen, must 
be made the true fruitage of the state, the only expres- 
sion of its successful operation. In practical importance, 
the state, at any one moment, far outweighs the indi- 
vidual ; but in theoretical value, the individual wholly 
overtops the state. The truth which comes first in order 
in the progress of society is the importance of the state. 
This is the early organic germ. 

The most complete of the works of Aristotle, that which 
remains a permanent contribution to knowledge and a 
constant instrument of progress, is his logic. This is 
allied to those discussions in mathematics from which 
later inquiry never departs. The logic of Aristotle lays 
down the axioms and inherent dependencies of judg- 
ments from which there is no appeal. These formal 
processes of thought are united to real things by correct 
definition, by conforming our concepts to the facts under 
consideration. Rare, indeed, have been the occasions in 
which one man has brought to distinct statement and 
correct use a fundamental method in intellectual activity. 

Aristotle divided the forms of real things, and so the 
forms of our judgments concerning them, conceived in 
the most general way, into ten classes. These are his 
categories. They are substance, quantity, quality, rela- 
tion, place, time, position, possession, action, passion. 
These categories, as they are intended to express the 
most general forms of being, ought to cover, and cover 



ARISTOTLE — CATEGORIES. 55 

only, those intuitions of reason which constitute the 
primitive form-elements of thought. Thought acts under 
conditions of rational order which are involved in it, and 
make it possible. Those general concepts which arise 
under experience, and are the products of classification, 
cannot be included in these higher categories, which 
they themselves imply. For example, all classes turn on 
the notion of resemblance, and can none of them give 
this notion or one as primitive as it. This distinction is 
not maintained in the categories of Aristotle, and they 
subserve, therefore, no important purpose either in logic 
or philosophy. They play backward and forward between 
primary and derived forms, and do not keep quite clear of 
each other. Thus place, time, action, passion are specific 
forms of relation. Relation may be generalized from 
them. There can hardly be a profitable discussion of 
categories except in connection with the primitive form- 
elements involved in reason. The consideration of that 
which is antecedent to thought, and that which is the 
product of thought, had not yet come to the front. 

The disciples of Aristotle added very little to his 
philosophy. Much of their attention was directed to 
ethics, and moral distinctions maintained a ruling interest 
with them to the end. 

§ 9. These three men, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, 
form a group more brilliant, more closely united, and at 
the same time with more marked personal distinctions 
than any other in the history of philosophy. The moral 
impulse, so dominant in the first master, Socrates, re- 
mained with both Plato and Aristotle, and through them 
passed on to their disciples. It is well to remember that 
this activity arose in reaction to the unbelief that opened 
the period. Unbelief was the foil on which belief ex- 



56 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

pended its blows, and awoke the mind to wider discus- 
sion and profounder thought. 

Plato stood for the more speculative element in this 
philosophy. By the vigor, freedom, and, still more, by the 
spiritualistic cast of his works, he has nourished, down to 
our own time, all the processes of pure thought. The 
idealistic tendency ever returns with pleasure to the 
words of Plato, so full of ideas, the impalpable sub- 
stances of things. 

Aristotle, turning from this speculation, not in weari- 
ness or disgust, but in search of more tangible results, — a 
desire so well met in his logic — reshaped the opinions of 
his master in closer conformity with facts, and became 
a supreme figure in that philosophy which unites insight 
with inquiry, and makes theory the rational exposition of 
the things given us in experience. Aristotle greatly 
transcends Plato in the firmness of his hold on both 
terms of knowledge, the rational form-elements and the 
empirical facts which fill them out and define them. The 
broken and tangled threads of the net of a balloon, that 
has collapsed and fallen, are hardly more unlike the same 
meshes when distended in mid-air by the buoyant up-lift 
of a lighter element, than are the confused and floating 
lines of speculative thought to the firm conclusions which 
are seen to envelop and bind together the events of daily 
life in their sensuous, pushing energy. The growing 
differences- of subsequent centuries have made the dis- 
tinction between Plato and Aristotle greater than it ; 
appeared in the men themselves. The three most power- 
ful impulses of the human mind, the ethical, the specula- I 
tive, and the practical, are offered in a relatively har- 
monized form in the three respectively, Socrates, Plato, i 
and Aristotle. 



TWO ADVERSE SCHOOLS. 57 

§ 10. This wide and brilliant outbreak of speculative 
inquiry passed by with the rapidity of a consecutive 
movement, and was followed by a long, slow decline in 
philosophy. The moral impulse gave rise to two adverse 
schools. The division was not more a speculative one 
than one of opposing tendencies, deeply implanted in the 
sensuous and spiritual nature of man. Happiness is the 
form which all good ultimately assumes. There have 
been those, whenever and wherever the distinctions of 
conduct have come under discussion, who have regarded 
the pursuit of happiness as the most simple and compre- 
hensive purpose in the life of man. Happiness has been 
offered as an object of pursuit, as if it were essentially 
one in kind, the substance of all good, and always capa- 
ble of being an immediate aim. 

There has been another tendency, not, perhaps, as 
general as this search of pleasure, but more profound and 
more authoritative. It asserts the mastery of man over 
circumstances, a superiority in man to his circumstances. 
It cherishes a certain contempt of pleasure, and is dis- 
posed to scorn the vexations and defy the calamities of 
life. The dignity of man seems to it to lie in rising 
above sensuous and social conditions, always liable to 
become sordid, and in asserting itself as something to be 
first thought of and ultimately pursued. The man is never 
to be weighed with the enjoyments of which he is capable. 

Happiness is regarded by those who share the more 
heroic temper as not, in itself, homogeneous, capable of 
like measurements in its diverse forms, nor as open, in its 
higher phases, to direct pursuit. The satisfaction of a 
self-contained and strong spirit is incident to the integrity 
which constitutes such a spirit, and admits of no com- 
parison with sensuous delights. 



58 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

Ethical distinctions may be developed on the practical 
side, as the fruits of these two tendencies ; or, on the 
speculative side, as involving in one or the other view the 
ultimate validity of the laws of conduct. In the period 
under consideration the division was one of spirit and 
taste quite as much as of pure thought. 

Epicurus (341) gave the lax and enticing theory of 
pleasure, as the comprehensive purpose of life, full ex- 
pression. The doctrine was not, in his hands, a sensuous 
one, but one of varied and reasonable enjoyments. Pleas- 
ure, as a principle of action, is not necessarily one of 
indulgence, though it offers but feeble resistance to ex- 
cess, and is exposed to a constant decline in that direc- 
tion. Epicureanism has thus come to indicate forms of 
pleasure more gross and insatiate than those contem- 
plated by Epicurus, or than those contained in the theory 
itself, wisely developed. The weakness of the theory in 
this direction is, that it must accept the impulses of men 
essentially as it finds them, and provide for the largest 
aggregate of enjoyment under them. Its periods are 
short, its motives immediate, and it can impose no 
protracted self-denial. Its measurements, moreover, are 
quantitative, not qualitative. If it allows one pleasure to 
be different in kind from another, the simplicity of the 
scheme is lost, its scale is broken. 

Epicurus received the germ of his hedonism from 
Aristippus, who had developed it in a one-sided way from 
the teachings of Socrates. Epicurus united it, by a fel- 
lowship very normal to it, with the naturalism of the 
Atomists. Thus planting himself firmly on the physical 
side of life, he was prepared for a very limited rendering 
of its scope. 

Matter and motion constitute the sum of being. The^ 



I 



EPICUREANISM. 59 

soul IS made up of atoms. All organizations are the 
results of development. Some combinations succeed 
and some fail. Perception arises from images — sidooXa — 
that enter through the senses. The senses give us the 
terms of knowledge. Reason adds nothing. Opinion is 
the result of continuous impressions. Abstruse reasoning 
is to be distrusted. This philosophy is remarkable for 
holding so many of the germs of empiricism. The fact 
goes to show the affiliation of these germs with each other, 
both on the intellectual and the emotional side. They 
arise in clusters, in a semi-organic way. The philosophy 
was a fitting preparation for the ethical system which 
grew out of it. 

Epicurus was kindly and social, and drew his disciples 
into a close circle about himself. The place of instruc- 
tion and intercourse was a garden at Athens. The 
garden was hardly more than an enclosed court of the 
house itself. The leading points in the theory are those 
with which we are now so familiar. Pleasure is the true 
end of effort, though wisdom must be exercised in its 
pursuit. Virtue is the use of the best means in the at- 
tainment of pleasure. Epicurus did not deny the exist- 
ence of the gods, but thought that they occupied inter- 
stellar spaces, and did not meddle with men. 

If we are to understand the reasons which justified the 
doctrines of Epicurus to himself and to his disciples, we 
must take into consideration not merely the constitu- 
tional force of the pleasure-seeking impulses in men, and 
the rightfulness that often belongs to them, but also the 
social vexations, the political harassments, the inimical 
religious beliefs, and the philosophical perplexities that 
belonged to his time. Epicureanism was, in part, the de- 
mand of the soul for peace within itself, and an uninter- 



ft 



6o SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 

rupted enjoyment of the possibilities which lie about it. 
Epicurus withdrew, and withdrew his disciples, from pub- 
lic life. The active impulses were too unsatisfactory in 
their results to be self-rewarding. He strove to protect 
from invasion the immediate enjoyments of intimate and 
affectionate intercourse by denying the reasonableness of 
the anxieties which harassed men, and laid upon them so 
much fruitless effort, so many empty alarms. Epicurean- 
ism was thus an effort to anticipate spiritual victory, and 
secure at once its reposefulness. 

The apprehensions of life are to be repelled. The gods 
are not to be feared — a fear, as he encountered it, far 
more productive of pain than of pleasure, of evil than of 
good, at least, to superficial vision. If they exist, they 
exist in remote regions, and do not concern themselves 
with our affairs. The actions and interests we assign 
them are quite fanciful. 

Fate, moreover, is not to be dreaded ; for the reason- 
ings of men concerning the inevitable nature of events 
are not to be trusted. He confirmed this conclusion by 
pointing out instances in which things do not prove to be 
what they seem to us to be ; in which like effects do not 
follow similar causes. Events are more flexible than our 
thoughts concerning them. 

A third fear, that of death, is to be overcome by con- 
ceiving it more correctly. Our apprehension of death 
arises from the fact that when we think of it we also 
think of ourselves as retaining our conscious life, and so 
being in uncomfortable contact with its smothering force. 
This is the result of our tendency to accept immortality. 
Regard death as absolute reposefulness, and it, no more 
than sleep, is repugnant to us. As a negation, it can 
bring no positive evil with it. Epicureanism was not,^ 



STOICISM. 6l 

then, so much a demand of the appetites for indulgence, 
as it was a search for a restful eddy in a stream whose 
rapids and whirlpools, whose toils and fading hopes, had 
become a weariness to men. 

This system, addressing itself strongly and In various 
ways to human nature, remained many centuries, and has 
reappeared in various forms all along the history of 
philosophy. It was a belief far more consonant with the 
Grecian than the Roman mind. The restless, speculative 
activity of the one race wearied the thoughts far more 
quickly than the sober, practical purposes of the other. 
Lucretius, among the Romans, was its most able and 
conspicuous advocate. 

Epicureanism gave a certain passive support to per- 
sonal liberty by weakening the bonds of religious and 
political belief, and seeking freedom for the individual in 
the pursuit of his own ends. It brought life closer to the 
man. It is a fungus that is not altogether mischievous 
when it finds vigorous, independent life on which to 
fasten. It leads the mind to be less satisfied with the 
bustle of mere motion. It can do nothing, however, to 
rebuild a strength it has helped to consume. 

§ II. The more noble Greek temper and the Roman 
temper find expression in Stoicism. Stoicism united itself, 
through the Cynics, to the more central assertion in the 
instructions of Socrates, that of self-control. Zeno (340) 
of Citium was the founder of this school. He gathered 
his pupils in the painted porch at Athens, and from this 
porch they received their appellation of Stoics. The four 
leading forms of speculation were designated, from the 
places in which the disciples of the respective schools 
were assembled, the Academy, the Lyceum, the Garden, 
and the Porch. 



i 



62 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

The stern ethics of Stoicism was united, in Zeno, with 
the philosophy of HeracUtus. This philosophy regarded 
fire as the soul of things, and attached much importance 
to the strife of two opposite tendencies, an upward and a 
downward one. Stoicism, the reverse of Epicureanism in 
its inner spirit, the conquering, not the reposeful, impulse, 
pushed men into the thick of the strife with evil, and 
found in adversity the best conditions of self-assertion. 
Panaetius (i8o) of Rhodes taught this philosophy at 
Rome. It was a philosophy thoroughly consonant with 
the Roman disposition in its loftier and more benignant 
forms. Stoicism expressed a moral temper quite as much 
as a system of doctrines, and was associated with con- 
siderable latitude and uncertainty of belief. Its crown- 
ing feature was the strong assertion of personal power, 
the power of mind over the conditions which surround it 
but do not control it. It stood, therefore, in the closest 
fellowship with all that is pure, self-reliant, and resolute 
in human character. It attached the greatest importance 
to law — law in individual action, law in the state, law in 
the world at large. Obedience is the supreme fact in life, 
and puts us at one with all that is good and great. 

Its chief defect lay in a hardness and narrowness of 
disposition which separated its disciples from that sym- 
pathetic contact with men by which virtue feeds the 
spiritual Avorld, and is fed from it. It distinguished itself 
from the teachings of Christ, especially at the point of 
the passive virtues, meekness, humility, patience. These 
virtues express the harmony of man with man in the 
softened contact of a spiritual life, narrow in each individ- 
ual, but most affluent in its general resources. There is no 
more distinctive quality in the words of Christ than that 
spirit of gentleness with which men are taught to walk 



STOICISM. 63 

with each other In the presence of their Heavenly Father. 
Stoicism helped to prepare the way for Christianity ; 
Christianity helped to soften the temper of Stoicism; 
yet the two affiliated less perfectly than might have been 
anticipated. The self-reliant mood of a philosophy of per- 
sonal life did not easily coalesce with the dependent, 
trustful spirit of religious faith. The blending of a 
thoughtful with a reverential mind, a strong with a con- 
cessive one, has always been the most difficult achieve- 
ment in progress. It is the ideal possession, ever beyond 
actual attainment. Stoicism greatly needed the ripening 
processes of grace. It was fruit promising to the eye, but 
not yet mellowed and flavored to the mouth. 

Epictetus, early in the Christian era, presented the 
precepts of Stoicism in their most vigorous form. He 
achieved, by means of them, a notable victory over the 
hard conditions of a slave, though these wounds of the 
flesh reappear in his rugged habit of mind. Seneca, lead- 
ing the luxurious life of a courtier, widens out these pre- 
cepts into a sober philosophy of social relations. Marcus 
Aurelius Antoninus, from the imperial throne, softens 
them into a humane and generous expression of fellow- 
ship. Under these very diverse conditions. Stoicism met 
nobly the demands of noble spirits upon it. One stands 
reverently with those who were able in so self-centred a 
way to abide with the truth — the mind's hold on spiritual 
relations. 

The beliefs associated with Stoicism, while fitted, in 
part, to maintain its lofty spirit, were not equal in scope 
to its ethical temper. They were changeable with dif- 
ferent persons and periods. Matter and force constitute 
the sum of things. Force is identical with fire, with 
intelligence, with God. Air, water, earth, are derived 



64 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

from fire. Fire and air are the active elements, water 
and earth the passive ones. All development proceeds 
by law, and has the determinate movement indicated by 
fate. This change is in cycles. At the close of each 
cycle all elements are reabsorbed in fire, and first terms 
are restored again. 

The spirit is not immaterial intelligence, but force united 
with the finest material substance. Matter and force are 
in all forms inseparable. The world is pervaded by the 
divine consciousness. The soul of man is an emanation 
from God. It is united to the warm breath within him. 
It survives life, but is not immortal. It necessarily dis- 
appears with the close of a cycle. God alone is eternal. 
All knowledge is derived from the senses. Concepts are 
the outgrowth, unconsciously and consciously, of percep- 
tions. 

The supreme object in life is virtue, a life conformed 
to nature. Virtue is the basis of true happiness. The 
virtuous man alone is free. He is inferior in worth to 
none, not even to God. He is lord over his own life, and 
may rightly put an end to it. This ideal of strength no 
man fully attains. 

The doctrines of Stoicism combine, in an unusual way, 
conflicting tendencies. The speculative element is not 
uppermost in them. They reject the dualism of Plato, 
and so far identify intelligence with its material terms of 
expression as to subject it to laws, physical in their form. 
The unity of the world is reached by asserting the insep- 
arable nature of matter and mind. Intelligence is iden- 
tified with force, and force receives its exposition under 
physical facts. Such a philosophy results, when rigidly 
developed, in the absorption of mental powers in material 
laws. In spite, however, of this preeminence of physical 



STOICISM. 65 

relations, the authority of the spirit of man within itself 
is asserted in the most unqualified manner. The ethical 
sentiment is left out of harmony with the movement of 
things, and oftentimes in intense and unsustained conflict 
with it. Stoicism is a doctrine of persistent strife rather 
than of full attainment. The incentives which spring 
from faith were especially wanting in Stoicism. Virtue 
was unwearied self-assertion, lacking the nourishment 
of an all-embracing divine love. Its religious terms were 
far below its moral ones, and chiefly because of the fatal- 
istic forms given to events by their physical rendering. 
The spirit of man was nobler within itself, and higher in 
its anticipations, than it of right should have been in a 
world ordered in so unswerving a fashion, with so little of 
divine grace. Virtue thus became a more cold and pas- 
sionless expression of intellectual power than it can be 
save in a few richly endowed natures. The true Stoic 
was an unusual man, who commanded more respect than 
affection, and was better fitted to instruct men than to 
inspire them. The atmosphere which he breathed was 
too rare and too cold for the ordinary purposes of life. 
Men were not drawn together by an all-comprehending 
energy without themselves as well as within them. Hu- 
man strength was asserted at its highest value, but not 
nourished with food adequate for it. There was intensity 
at the centre of effort, but no widening circles of activity 
outward and upward, receiving, at each stage of transfer, 
new inspirations of power and revelations of love. The 
soul was driven onward, rather than drawn upward in a 
divine path. 

An ascetic tendency readily united itself to Stoicism. 
Standing in more natural fellowship with it than it did 
with Christianity, this extreme method did not vitiate it 
5 



(£ SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

in the same degree. Some good has come from asceti- 
cism, even in Christianity, yet it involves a profound 
misinterpretation of its spirit and purposes. All men of 
a strongly predominant moral temper have in them ele- 
ments of Stoicism. It thus expresses a form of belief 
which returns, in all ages, in connection with a moral 
force struggling with the conditions which enclose it. No 
development, aside from Christianity, is more worthy of 
admiration, or yields more inspiration, than Stoicism. Its 
spiritual energy greatly excels its philosophical insight. 

There is an interesting, though somewhat indirect, in- 
fluence of Stoicism found in the Catholic doctrines of the 
Trinity and of the nature of Christ. There were two 
distinct philosophical tendencies which those who took 
part in the discussions that settled the creed of the 
Church felt, in common with their time. The theosophy 
of Neo-Platonism regarded God as wholly transcendent, 
having no term of union with the world. He could stand 
in no relation of contact with matter. Matter brings 
with it limitation and evil. Asceticism is the conquest of 
these physical and malign influences. This philosophy 
militated with the notion of an incarnation and the 
divinity of Christ. 

Stoicism, on the other hand, regarded God as immanent 
in the universe. Matter and spirit are inseparable. The 
Alexandrian school of theology, in its great masters, as 
Clement and Origen, accepted this immanence of deity* 
God might, therefore, indwell in Christ. The doctrine of 
the Trinity was virtually a triumph of the conception of 
a God ever near at hand, over that of a transcendental, 
unapproachable Being. Stoicism was not mystical, but 
spiritually strong, and so affiliated with the more tangi- 
ble formulae of faith. 



PYRRHONISM. 6/ 

§ 12. An era of positive conviction always gives occa- 
sion to skepticism. What doubt is to the Individual 
mind, that is skepticism to the general mind, a test of the 
work already done, and an incentive to farther work. 
Skepticism arises, in its more superficial forms, from the 
conflicting character of the conclusions of philosophy, 
and, in its more searching forms, from the alleged in- 
adequacy of them, one and all. The skepticism of this 
period is especially associated with Pyrrho (360) of Ells. 
The forms and grounds of his unbelief were much the 
same as those of the Sophists. He regarded reality as 
unattainable. Truth is beyond the reach of man. The 
just and the unjust are distinctions of customs only. The 
wise man, therefore, must maintain a tranquil temper, 
undisturbed by changeable opinion. As this skepticism 
is of the most sweeping character, Pyrrhonism came to 
be a general term for unbelief. Yet this universal denial 
must itself become an undeniable truth before the mind 
can be quieted by It. Uncertainty, uncertainty In refer- 
ence to that which seems to be of great moment, can- 
not fail to give rise to anxiety. 

Carneades (214) of Cyrene exerted very considerable 
influence on speculative unbelief. At one time, as an 
ambassador at Rome, he encountered the more practical 
and more positive temper of the Romans, and gave it 
sharp offence. Cato the Elder was especially unwilling 
that the youth of Rome should be turned from the cus- 
tomary and safe convictions of public policy to these per- 
plexing, unsettling discussions of abstract truth. No two 
forms of thought could readily be more opposed to each 
other than that of the narrow-minded, forceful Roman, 
and that of the supple, volatile Greek. 

Carneades urged the contradictory character of our 



68 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas, especially In regard to God. God can neither be 
corporeal nor incorporeal. Infinity and personality are 
irreconcilable. 

^nesidemus, who taught at Alexandria in the first 
century, gave form to the ten tropes current among 
skeptics as the concise expression of unbelief. They were 
afterwards reduced to five, as follows : contradictory opin- 
ions among men ; infinite regress of proof ; relativity of 
knowledge ; arbitrary character of first assertions ; proof 
returning into a circle. These again were resolved into 
two cardinal denials : nothing is certain as shown by the 
discrepancy of opinions ; nothing can be made certain by 
proof, since proof can find no starting-point. It either 
recedes ad infinitum or returns into itself. 

These early perplexities of unbelief are essentially those 
of our time, and turn finally on the still open question, 
the nature of the first terms of knowledge, whether 
empirical or intuitive. That is to say, the foundations 
of belief are laid in faith, in the confidence of the mind 
in its own processes, in an insight so clear as to carry 
conviction with it, or they cannot be laid at all. Mere 
experience is variable within itself and wholly finite. It 
cannot overleap its own bounds, and reach any absolute 
truth. 

The final form of denial was double, practical and 
theoretical. Empirically it is said opinions are in unend- 
ing conflict". This assertion is met by mathematics, logic, 
the vast accumulation of reliable truths known as science, 
and the many safe convictions of current knowledge. 
Certainly, experience, in spite of all discrepancies, con- 
firms, with an immeasurable preponderance of proof, the 
distinction of the true and the untrue, and puts its seal, 
with increasing distinctness, on the stores of learning. 



ECLECTICISM. 69 

Theoretically, we have only to make and to hold fast the 
distinction of proof by rational insight and by inference, 
and the second difficulty disappears. We have first 
truths, and have them, as alone they can be given, as 
visions of the mind. Are these two forms of proof after 
all so diverse that we can accept inference and reject in- 
sight ? Inference is insight falling into progressive steps. 
The logical process is wholly powerless without the 
axiomatic penetration of mind which accompanies it. 
The conclusion is held in the premises, not mechanically, 
but for the apprehension of apprehending powers. 

§ 13. The period which covered the lives of Plato and 
Aristotle was one of such great mental vigor as to push 
skepticism into the background. When, however, this 
creative movement exhausted itself, the sifting processes 
of skepticism set in, and in turn gave occasion to eclec- 
ticism. Eclecticism, if it is simply eclecticism, which it 
rarely is, stands for somewhat feeble philosophical power. 
Yet sound philosophy will always be somewhat eclectic, 
as each positive phase of thought, while it tends to be- 
come extreme, is wont to hold some germinant forms of 
truth. These sound principles, however, cannot be dis- 
criminated, tested, and united save in connection with 
ruling ideas, which themselves coalesce in a system. Ec- 
lecticism, in its least commanding form, is a prudent 
acceptance of principles that best meet the existing con-* 
ditions of life ; and in its wider scope is framing together, 
with fresh structural devices, the accumulated material 
of knowledge. 

The eclectic possessed, in the works of Plato, Aristotle, 
Zeno, not only abundant material for selection, but mate- 
rial by no means repellent in its different parts. It was 
not difficult to unite beliefs taken from masters so con- 



70 SECOND PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

current in spirit. In the century before Christ, Antiochus 
built up an eclectic school at Athens. Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus established in that city four schools of philos- 
ophy, devoted respectively to the four systems. 

Cicero was a pupil of Antiochus, and while he regarded 
himself as a Neo-Platonist, he shared the eclectic ten- 
dency. His chief power lay in putting things, in the in- 
telligibility and interest he imparted to them. Having 
closed his political career, he gave himself to philosophy. 
An eclecticism searching for reliable opinions amid much 
uncertainty and unbelief predominated in him. He was 
the first to make the statement distinctly, that truth, in 
the last resort, turns on insight, the hold of the mind on 
the objects of thought. In consistency with this assertion, 
he was inclined, in morals, to Stoicism — a law of conduct 
implanted in the soul itself. He found the strong argu- 
ment for the being of God and for immortality in the 
universality of the notion. The drift of mind, the out- 
put of the spiritual world, lie in this direction, and stand 
for very much. This is a proof Avhich addresses itself 
equally to him who has faith in a pervasive moral im- 
pulse, and to him who accepts as validities those beliefs 
which are developed by an accumulative movement under 
the progress of events. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Eclecticism is an easy point of transition to a new- 
direction of inquiry. The Christian era opened with 
theosophy, a disposition to inquire into the nature of 
God, and to search for some form of revelation. A clue 
was sought, in this highest phase of thought, for a recon- 
ciliation of the manifold and conflicting conclusions of 
philosophy. This tendency was very general. Christi- 
anity came forward at a time in which men were already 
engaged with conceptions not wholly unlike its own. 
Christianity was modified by this current tendency, and 
in turn impressed itself upon it. There were three prom- 
inent forms of theosophy, not very unlike each other, the 
Hellenistic — or Jewish Greek — the Neo-Platonic, and the 
Neo-Pythagorean. 

In this theosophic development, which became general, 
extended, and protracted, the Greek method, which had 
been predominantly cosmic, psychological, and ethical, 
came in contact with orientalism, in which the whole 
movement of the world rests back on deity, and succes- 
sive developments from its immeasurable depths. Thus, in 
Brahmanism, a series of emanations of the earth-soul gives 
us conscious Brahma, the gods, men in castes, and the ani- 
mals. The world is not built up by material laws and ele- 
ments from lower to higher, but is unfolded from inscru- 



72 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

table supersensuous terms in which the higher precedes 
the lower and yields it. The idea of emanation, so con- 
stantly present to oriental speculation, is more applicable 
to intellectual than to physical relations. The mind 
proceeds in it from the general to the particular, from the 
vague to the definite, from images to realities. There are 
no clearly defined terms within experience which, under 
this notion, can be made the norm of thought, and hold 
the mind back from mysticism, and the vague, change- 
able images of a sublimated imagination. It is a concep- 
tion especially unfit for any of the purposes of knowledge. 
While emanation has the advantage of drawing the 
attention to a supreme power, pushing its way everywhere 
in creation, it has the very grave disadvantage of obscur- 
ing and confounding all the processes of development. 
It offers no definite, tangible method under which they 
proceed. Evolution gives us a distinct, well-defined 
movement, whose coherent steps are sustained by expe- 
rience and interpret it ; but as an ultimate explanation it 
labors under the difficulty of inadequate, vanishing first 
terms. It has mechanism, but not mind; motion, but no 
propelling power. Emanation leads the mind away from 
all close thought and definite inquiry, and leaves it thor- 
oughly subjected to its own dreamy and vagrant images. 
The theosophy which grew out of Greek philosophy, 
influenced by oriental modes of thought, widely diffused 
in the earlier years of the Christian era, was one in which 
the unsearchable character of the ultimate, divine element 
was united in belief with secondary manifestations and 
subordinate revelations of God. It was the unfolding of 
deity, rather than the development of the world, that 
drew attention. The theme was infinitely beyond the 
reach of profitable inquiry. The opening of the Gospel 



TIIEOSOPHY. 73 

of St. John shows a trace of theosophy : In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. 

This theosophic tendency came forward independently 
of Christianity. Christianity was brought into warm con- 
flict with it, and was very considerably modified by it. 
The two were concurrent, yet hostile, movements. Greek 
philosophy ripened — or at least progressed — into theoso- 
phy. In its highest form, in the Platonic period, it renewed 
itself in the teachings of Socrates by virtue of a distinctly 
moral impulse. It rejected the evasive methods of the 
Sophists in behalf of conviction, conduct, character. The 
most positive and controlling belief to which it gave rise, 
that of Stoicism, was preeminently full of moral vigor. 
But ethical truth easily affiliates with religious faith, in- 
terests the mind in the spiritual government of the world 
and in immortality. There was a spiritual temper in Plato- 
nism which readily carried the thoughts forward to theos- 
ophy, as holding the cardinal truths of being. The vague 
and mystical element involved in the Platonic doctrine of 
ideas easily prepared the way for emanation, and an 
obscure dependence of all forms of intermediate manifes- 
tation on the Ultimate Good. Indeed, this relation of God 
as the Ultimate Good to all other ideas had been, in Plato- 
nism, aground of difficulty and doubt. The conception of 
the Good tended to assume so abstract a character as at 
once to include and exclude all particulars. It afforded 
the stuff from which a plausible process of emanation 
could take its rise. 

The Platonic estimate of matter as bringing limitation 
and weakness to all forms of being into which it entered, 
the slight valuation of empirical knowledge which accom- 
panied this opinion, and the strong assertion of a higher 



74 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

insight of reason, all helped to open the way to a theos- 
ophy in which visible things were far removed from those 
unsearchable truths attained only in an ecstasy of revela- 
tion. There was much in the Platonic mode of thought 
which made it receptive of oriental ideas, and carried it 
forward into a faith more sober, indeed, than the beliefs 
of the East, but allied to them in its supersensuous and 
unverifiable character. 

The Pythagoreans, in the mystical importance which 
they attached to number, in their ascetic and spiritual- 
istic temper, and in their doctrine of metempsychosis, 
were open to the same prevailing movement. They could 
hardly escape this inroad of speculation on the highest 
themes. 

Theosophy, in its Hellenistic form, found full expression 
in Philo (25 B. c), who taught in Alexandria. God is 
apprehensible only by reason. He transcends all forms 
of perfection, even virtue itself. He is universal being, 
absolute and free. He stands in no contact with matter. 
The Logos intervenes between God and the world. The 
divine element, which is disclosed in creation, is the 
Logos. There are many other intermediate and inferior 
spirits, who carry forward the movement of the world. 
They are parts of the Logos, as subordinate ideas are 
included in a more general idea. The most general idea 
is the Logos. The Logos springs from God by genesis. 
He is the first begotten. 

The Logos, wisdom, vacillates, in the system of Philo, 
between an abstraction, affiliated with the Platonic idea, 
and a person. Higher religious truths are apprehended 
only under the exaltation of spiritual ecstasy. This, of 
course, cuts them off from contradiction and criticism, 
and of itself tends to provoke excess. 



GNOSTICISM. 75 

This theory gives one of the many examples of a favor- 
ite method in philosophy, the introduction of a middle 
term between two irreconcilable extremes ; in this case, 
between an infinite and perfect spirit and the finite and 
imperfect products of the material world. Matter cannot 
fail to mar whatever it enters into ; there can, therefore, 
be no contact between it and the Supreme Being. The 
difficulty attendant on the union must be subdivided be- 
fore it can be overcome. 

While the language of St. John shows sympathetic 
touch with the Hellenistic philosophy, there is no close 
affinity between the revelation of God in Christ and the 
Logos of Philo. The conception of Christ as a second 
person in the Trinity, begotten of the Father, approaches 
more nearly that of the Logos. Yet the notion of an 
incarnation, a definite revelation of God in human form, 
is one akin to the philosophy of Philo. It is not in the 
conception of the apostles, so much as in that of the 
later theologians, that we find the points of contact 
between the two systems. 

Christianity was brought, in the earlier centuries, in 
very close connection with this assertion of the remote- 
ness of God from the knowledge of men, and of creation 
and revelation through intermediate agents. Gnosticism, 
which came forward persistently in many forms, was a 
crude religious philosophy, which endeavored to harmonize 
Christianity with Hellenistic beliefs. A series of emana- 
tions from the Divine Being, aeons, made up the heavenly 
hierarchy, and stood between the Supreme Father and the 
world. The God of the Old Testament and Christ were 
aeons taking part in the redemption of the world. The 
Gnostic thus strove to retain the perfect and immutable 
character of one Supreme Being, in spite of the deficiency 



76 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

and failure in the world. These found entrance through 
agents subordinate in power, wisdom, and goodness. Men 
have experienced, because of the obvious conflict of ele- 
ments in the world about them, great difBculty in finding 
their way to a sense of comprehensive unity. Whether it 
has been, as with Plato, the limitations of matter that have 
trammelled spiritual development ; or, as Avith Mani, the 
antagonism of two distinct powers, light and darkness; 
or, as with the Christian theologians, the struggle in the 
soul of men between the holy and the unholy, the thoughts 
of men have not been able, by virtue of the processes of 
growth, to rise to the union of all elements in the Creative 
Mind, but have sunk into the strife and obscurity of the 
facts before them. 

The most marked direction in which the growing theos- 
ophy affected Christianity was in the development of the 
doctrine of the Trinity. The revelation of God in Christ 
and in the Holy Spirit gave play to that philosophy of 
the divine nature which had gained so strong a hold on 
the Greek mind. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, 
might readily have been accepted as a designation of a 
special form of divine action, but the physical presence 
of Christ in the world carried the theologian forward into 
a more curious, critical, and speculative construction of the 
nature of God, one that should run more nearly parallel 
with existing forms of thought. The Nicene Creed, in its 
later form, gives this statement of the belief of the Church : 
" We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of 
all things, both visible and invisible ; and in one Lord 
Jesus Christ ; the Son of God, begotten of the Father, 
light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, 
being of one substance with the Father, by whom all 
things were made. . . . We believe in the Holy Ghost, 



NEO-PLATONISTS. 7/ 

the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeded from the Father 
and the Son. . . .'* This confession is as remarkable 
for its divergence from Hellenistic theosophy as for its 
concurrence with it. The Son is inseparably united with 
the Father in being and attributes. So far the subordi- 
nate relation and service of the Logos are set aside. But 
the notions of genesis and procession, so vague and mys- 
tical, were laid hold of as a means of preserving the dis- 
tinction of persons, and giving them a living interdepend- 
ence. The symbol is more admirable in its opposition 
than in its concession, in its gathering all things into the 
mind of God than in its fanciful separation of them in 
the persons of the Trinity. 

§ 2. ApoUonius of Tyana, who lived in the time of 
Nero, may stand as a representative of the Neo-Pythago- 
reans. They exerted much less influence than the Neo- 
Platonists. They shared the aloofness which had be- 
longed to the disciples of Pythagoras. ApoUonius became 
the subject of an idealizing and imaginative narrative that 
quite transformed his history and character. 

Theosophy offers itself in a form so much more vigor- 
ous in the doctrines of the Neo-Platonists, that we pass 
at once to these, its leading representatives. Plotinus 
(204 A. D.), who taught at Rome, affirmed in the most 
absolute way the transcendent character of God. He is 
elevated above all cognition. The first product of the 
One is Nous, the divine reason. The Nous includes, as 
its constituent terms, the ideas. From the Nous springs 
the soul, and from the soul come all material forms. 
There is a plurality of souls, but the highest of all is the 
world-soul. The soul contains the body. The Nous con- 
tains the soul. The One contains the Nous. We have 
thus, under a notion applicable to intellectual relations, 



78 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

the procession of all things from the Absolute, the inclu- 
sion of all things in the Absolute. Man has sunk into 
the sensuous terms which surround him. Virtue is a 
return to God, and this is attained by ecstatic elevation. 
A rational apprehension of ideas is a transitional term in 
the process. Matter, though possessed of no real being, 
though only an indeterminate element that waits to re- 
ceive form from the soul, is an evil and a limitation. 

The philosophy of Plotinus rests back on that of Plato, 
but differs from it in exalting the One above all ideas; in 
making the Divine Reason, the Logos, the first step in a 
spiritual unfolding, and in giving the ideas a distinct ex- 
istence in that Reason. The system, therefore, as offered 
by Plotinus, is a more consistent, thoroughly elaborated 
scheme of emanations by which the One, the Ineffable, 
the Spiritual, unfolds itself, first in intellectual, and later 
in sensuous, terms. Ascent is retreat along this same line 
of advance. The notions which receive new emphasis 
are the inapprehensible nature of God, and the ecstasy by 
which we are made partakers in it. The physical world, 
aside from mind, is only darkness, an empty and barren 
possibility. The fascinating force of the philosophy lies 
in its first term, the One. The mind is elevated and 
stimulated by a conception of the world which derives all 
things from so inexhaustible a Centre. It accepts a 
mysticism which turns it aside from experience, and ob- 
scures the movements of thought, because of its delight 
in this transcendent Origin. The mind rejoices in this 
ecstatic attitude, and denies itself the satisfaction of com- 
prehension that it may itself be comprehended in that so 
far beyond it. There is hardly a more striking proof 
possible of the aspiration of the human mind than the 
eagerness with which it travels any path with an upward 



PORPHYRY. 79 

trend, even though Its steps are effaced as soon as made. 
With the enthusiasm of the mountaineer, it pushes up- 
ward through bhnding and drifting snow. The pressing 
back, by ecstasy, into the Inapprehensible is regarded as 
the apotheosis of reason, when in truth It Is the suicide 
of reason. We owe this philosophy two things, the 
magnifying of reason as the one only constructive term, 
and the carrying the conception of God above all anthro- 
pomorphic expression. It is better utterly to transcend 
measurements than to tarry stolidly within them. These 
two elements In the notion of God, the apprehensible 
and the inapprehensible, will always contend with each 
other for the mastery. The loss of either unbalances the 
Idea, and robs It in part of its true service. 

Porphyry, a disciple of Plotinus, was a vigorous oppo- 
nent of Christianity. The rising of the soul by self-denial, 
the separation of it from Its own base desires, and a cog- 
nition of God, were with him the true salvation. The 
divinity of Christ was emphatically foolishness to the 
Greek, trained in the school of Plato. It was making the 
top touch the bottom, to its own infinite loss. We are to 
climb upward as best we may, but for that which Is above 
to descend to us is to ruin all ; we are not to go forward 
with God, but to grope our way backward to him. The 
sympathetic circle in which all things touch each other 
is slow to reveal itself to men. They have affirmed a 
remoteness of one thing from another, of matter from 
mind, of man from God, of the finite from the infinite, 
most untrue to the facts — ever sweeping on in vortices of 
intercommunicable thoughts and interchangeable forces. 
It Is what we may term the growing limits of the world, 
and not its dead centre, lapsed with the lapse of time, 
that hold all truth, light, and love, all physical, human, 



8o THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

and divine things in instant fellowship. When God comes 
nearest us in Christ, he most of all transcends us. A 
moral revelation lies in obliterating spaces, as much as 
does a physical revelation in establishing them. The 
spiritually near and remote are akin to each other. When 
we are so close in spirit as to see, we are able to meas- 
ure and magnify distances. The Christian system is an 
empirical, and so a real and distinct, presentation of the 
wisdom and grace of God. We never truly find these 
attributes till we find them in things. 

Proclus (41 1), who taught at Athens, systematized the 
entire body of Neo-Platonic doctrines. He was the latest 
of its masters. The school at Athens was closed by 
Justinian, in 529. Greek philosophy slowly and obscurely 
dissolved into the intellectual soil and helped, henceforth, 
to fertilize the wide and arid fields of mediaeval specula- 
tion. By descent and by revival it has come down to our 
own time, steadily influential in the world of thought. 
Though nothing of moment is lost in intellectual progress, 
its methods are discontinuous and wasteful. We do not 
collectively attain the highways of knowledge, till many 
minds, at distant periods, have travelled over them, and 
repeated wanderings have exhausted the terms of error. 
In the history of philosophy, the liberty of the individual 
counts for more than the march of the host. Men fall into 
line, not as a flock which is driven, but as one which is 
called, and " heeds the call reluctantly and hesitatingly. 
The truths of Platonism and Neo-Platonism have slowly 
been taken up again, one by one, as later growth was 
able to assimilate them. 

§ 3. This last movement in Greek philosophy was, in a 
very important sense, a culminating one, and one which 
has most helped the growth of philosophy. The ultimate 



GOD AS UNKNOWN. 8l 

problem of all speculative thought, whether we solve it on 
the positive or the negative side, is the origin of things. 
We settle by it not only what is supreme and what is 
subordinate in the flow of events, but we determine the 
nature of the leading forces which take part in develop- 
ment. The end, purpose, and movement of the world are 
thereby laid open to us. This assertion is equally true, 
whatever may be the beliefs accepted by us. If the full 
stream of power, which stretches everywhere about us, 
and in which we are borne forward, is made to flow from 
a region wholly undefined by thought, the darkness and 
mystery of this origin go with it in all its course. If it 
arises in an arid, shapeless realm of physical forces, bereft 
of all design, barren of all purpose, it gains no human 
fellowship as it slowly flows forward in the beauty of 
creation and the accumulating consolations of life. If it 
takes its beginning in the divine mind, it carries with it 
every^where the cheerfulness of the divine presence and 
the music of the divine love. 

The theosophy of this period accomplished its chief 
purpose, performed its best service, in breaking through 
the narrow, anthropomorphic forms of thought and feel- 
ing which accompanied polytheism, and in reaching back- 
ward and upward to an immeasurable Source of all things, 
who bore, at least to the feelings of men, the force of a 
personal being. It was inevitable that, in casting off the 
gross limitations which had so long oppressed the notion 
of divinity, vagueness and uncertainty should overtake 
the new conception. In making this great gain, some 
things were lost. A being strictly unknown, actually 
beyond all predicates, can serve no purpose in philosophy, 
give no guidance to thought, or strength to faith. These 
extreme statements are accepted simply because the 



82 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

mind is wiser than it seems to be, and discounts its own 
assertions for the practical uses of life. The very impulse 
which leads to the acceptance of such an Infinite One 
implies a profound relation of Deity to the relative and 
the finite, which are thus made to lead up to him. If he 
were what he is affirmed to be, he would lie wholly out- 
side of things and thoughts, and bring to them no explan- 
atory term whatever. The whole movement of mind 
under which such a conception was reached would be 
illogical and abortive. All the purposes of philosophy, 
which push us onward toward God, demand that he shall 
be, when we attain the conception, something other than 
the Unknown. 

We must be able to return from this effort of exalta- 
tion to one of expansion and comprehension. The infinite 
must embrace the finite, eternity hold each moment of 
time ; the absolute must include and define the causal rela- 
tions of the world, not exclude them, otherwise we have 
gained nothing. The problem is left precisely as we 
found it. Moreover, magnitude cannot sustain its majesty 
on any other terms than those of definition in endless 
spaces and measureless surfaces. The infinite collapses 
if it holds nothing, the large and the little touch each 
other, and complete each other in God. It is more nearly 
true to say that an inexhaustible number of things can 
be affirmed of God, than that nothing can be affirmed 
of him. The one pregnant idea which expounds the 
Universe stands of necessity in innumerable relations 
with it. The safety of our thought lies in the fact that 
in all our certainty, all our overflowing affirmations, we 
allow ourselves no close, hard limits beyond which there 
is nothing. How much we understand of the energies 
enclosed in that enveloping ocean, the atmosphere ; ye|> 



ECSTASY AND FAITH. 83 

in how many ways it transcends us, and maintains its own 
mystery. 

The theosophy of Plotinus added distinctness and 
elevation to the philosophy of Plato. It moved the 
thoughts of men profoundly and reverently and worship- 
fully, yet it, in its turn, needed a far closer and more 
loving contact with the social, moral problem of the 
world that chiefly calls for faith in God, and chiefly defines 
it. It needed to feel his omnipresence, and be made a 
partaker in his spiritual life. The wealth of the divine life 
is not left behind us. That which comes from it contains it, 
reveals it. Abiding with this eternal revelation, this light 
which is light, we walk with him in growing apprehen- 
sion. We must not cut off God from the light, any more 
than we cut off the light from God. If the past needs 
him, not less does the present need him ; if he is the be- 
ginning, equally is he the unfolding, of all things. Inter- 
mediates, that shut him from the eye, are, one and all, 
an obstruction to vision and a fresh confusion of thought, 
inadequate sources of inadequate things. The analysis 
which brings clearness to philosophy, at this point, must 
pertain to the exact purpose in spiritual life subserved by 
the divine presence. 

§ 4. The second dogma of the Neo-Platonic philosophy 
was that of ecstasy, the cognition of God by a mystical 
exaltation of the mind. There is here also a kernel of 
truth of utmost moment, which men are always recogniz- 
ing, yet failing fully to attain. They easily surrender the 
effort of definition, as if definition in this high, rare, 
changeable region involved a kind of folly. The term, in 
religious belief, which is least measured, and can never 
be excluded by ordinary forms of thought, is that which 
is expressed as faith. Faith, in its more rapt forms, 



84 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

is allied to ecstasy. The substantial quality in faith, that 
which shows it truly amenable to reason, is that, in com- 
mon with all the higher forms of spiritual apprehension^ 
it is suffused with feeling, as light is with color. The 
two, light and color, are inseparable in the revelation of 
the world ; if we miss the color, we miss a part of the 
disclosure, and the defect may extend even to the tangible 
elements of form and position. Spiritual truth deals with 
spiritual feelings as certainly as with spiritual thoughts. 
These are the terms in which its values are expressed. 
Not, therefore, to feel — to feel broadly and keenly and con- 
stantly — the spiritual conditions of spiritual life, is not to 
understand that life, is a flat failure in spiritual cognition. 
Knowing, in this region, is a variable of feeling, and the 
depth, delicacy, and justness of feeling are the penetration 
and illuminating power of thought. Hence it is easy to 
say, and in a degree just to say, that ecstasy is the meas- 
ure of insight. Better is it to understand that reason, in 
all its manifestations, is not cold and colorless, but, like 
morning light, palpitating with heat and passing every- 
where into variable tints under the touch of living things. 
This mutability is reason ; the feeling which is born of 
reason is its own lawful progeny, and carries with it to 
successive generations the true genetic power. The affir- 
mation of ecstasy, mystical and obscure as it too often is 
in its practical application, is the recognition of unity in 
the emotional response of the mind of man with the mind 
of God. One thing is better than it, the recognition that 
every step of this process may be, ought to be, rationally 
sound ; that reason is entitled to these first discriminating 
terms of feeling as certainly as to the conclusions which 
can be drawn from them. 

§ 5. A purpose in theosophy of hardly less moment 



MATTER AND GOD. 85 

than that of the exaltation of the idea of God was a 
protection in thought of his purity from the frailty and 
defilement of the world. The Platonic conception of 
matter was very extended in its influence, and yet it was 
one peculiarly vague, calling for correction by a better 
knowledge of things. The sensuous impression of a dull, 
characterless substratum in matter, which is an insuffi- 
cient medium of active quality, is one which the mind is 
quick to form, and slow to yield. This substratum was 
reduced to its lowest terms by Plato, as mere potential- 
ity — terms so low that they admitted of no intelligible 
empirical statement, and yet were present to exert a very 
important philosophical influence. Potentiality must in- 
volve in clear thought some substantial quality ; matter, 
therefore, that is mere potentiality ceases to exist alto- 
gether. But if matter is not real, as Plotinus affirms, it 
can play no part among real things. The limitations of 
the physical world cannot be referred to an abstraction. 
In the Platonic system the sensuous element remains to 
do a service which its intellectual terms do not allow it to 
perform. It is kept as an apology for defects which, after 
all, are not traceable to it. Matter must have positive, 
independent being, substance and attribute, before it can 
be made the source of the alleged failures in the construc- 
tive idea of the world. For purposes of knowledge it 
quite disappears in the Platonic philosophy ; for purposes 
of ethical explanation it is a constant and malign pres- 
ence. 

Empirical inquiry has done much in helping us to 
define the precise position of matter, and in enabling us 
to reduce it to its fundamental terms in cosmogony. If 
we distinguish between forces and energies, as the one 
expressed in the properties of elements, and the other in 



S6 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

the interplay between elements, matter is made up of 
distinct groups of forces wholly definite in kind, and 
thoroughly constructive in their relations to each other. 
There is, therefore, no opportunity to distinguish between 
formative forces and a passive material by means of 
which and upon which they express themselves. The 
form lies in the primitive force. The substance is not 
here and the force there, the sensuous limits on this 
side and the shaping powers on that. We do not reach 
a tangible something by the union of two intangibles. 
The force creates, defines, constitutes its own conditions 
precisely as a thought its conditions. A thought is a 
thought through and through, and that only; a force is a 
force through and through, and that only. Its conditions, 
so far as they pertain to itself, are involved in its own 
being, are the form of that being. 

Hence the divine element in matter is all the element 
there present. There is no substratum, no passive me- 
dium, no stuff, no potentiality that puts restraint upon 
physical forces, or limits pure spirit at work in the con- 
struction of a physical universe. This is not denying the 
distinct nature of matter, the ever-distinguishable activi- 
ties which we term physical ; it is only denying that there 
are any antecedent terms to the material world, putting 
restraint upon it when it begins to come forward as a 
definite structure. The world is not made of stuff, it is 
made of ideas, given that permanent, self-contained ex- 
pression which we term matter. We have no reason, un- 
der our growing knowledge of the material world, to affirm 
that there are any antecedent conditions of any sort alien 
to mind, and which put upon its intelligent activity modi- 
fications of any kind whatever. When we have the ele- 
ments we have the whole thing. These are either wholly 



MATTER AND GOD. 87 

products of mind or wholly Independent of mind. They 
give no indication of being an admixture of conflicting 
constituents. A notion of this sort is derived from the 
relation of our own spirits, finite spirits, to the world — a 
world that exists antecedently to us, independently of 
us, and with constant restraint upon us. 

There is, then, no opportunity to explain the evil of the 
world by the refractory material of which it is composed, or 
by any forces whatever which resist the divine hand. All 
such conceptions are in derogation of that very infinity, 
that complete potentiality, which stand represented to us in 
God, and which are the justifying grounds of the concep- 
tion. Finite beings must be established empirically, the 
Infinite Being rationally. The limits of the Absolute, and 
the Absolute in expression is limited, come from within 
and not from without. Our notion of the Absolute, 
guided in its construction both by the coherence of ideas 
and by our knowledge of the concrete facts of the Avorld, 
should be that comprehensive form of being which has no 
external conditions, and institutes laws, relations, limits, 
within itself for its own activity. The only question is 
whether such a form of being, such a supreme unity, is 
best found in matter or in mind? Which term can best 
embrace the other? 

We must, then, under the notion of theism, seek some 
other explanation of the evils of the world than this of 
the want of pliancy in matter. Matter is absolutely and 
wholly penetrable by the Divine Mind. The simplicity of 
matter is as complete as that of mind. All reason and 
all experience lead to this conclusion. We must, in 
restoring the omniscience of God, find the solution of the 
problem of evil — for defect in its highest form is ethical, 
not physical — in the divine thought, and not beyond 



88 THE THIRD PERIOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 

it. Development, growth, a spiritual creation, involve, 
as a process of revelation, a passage from the less to the 
greater, from the partial to the more perfect, from com- 
parative darkness into more complete light, and the rapid- 
ity of this passage fittingly turns not on the power of the 
Infinite Mind who unfolds the truth, but on the power of 
our minds which receive it. It is because the Divine Life, 
in its progress, enfolds our lives, that its procedure seems 
so slow and defective, yet in and by this very fact it is 
spiritually more perfect than it otherwise would be. We 
must see the beauty of the flower in connection with the 
crass soil out of which it grows and the coarse integu- 
ments which enclose it. The deficiencies and the excel- 
lences are interpreted together. They are parts of one 
thing. We cannot understand the ways of God to man 
except in the apprehension of both man and God, and 
the growth of man in God. It is growth, motion upward, 
that expounds the depths below us and the heights above 
us. Growth, as a rational conception and one of supreme 
exaltation, cannot be handled otherwise than through and 
by terms identical in kind with those which enclose us. 
Deficiencies in the movement toward perfection have no 
other significance than shadows in the breaking of day. 
The question of degree is a variable one of no profound 
significance. The one hope, the one elation, is, the light 
Cometh. 

We may, if we choose, puzzle ourselves with the pre- 
cise form and measure of these conditions of growth, — 
growth itself best clears up these difficulties — but their 
general character and necessity are involved in growth 
itself, the dynamical force and fulness of "the spiritual 
world. Growth, like the earth in its orbit, carries all 
things with it. The Neo-Platonist needed to draw near to 



7 



MATTER AND GOD. 89 

God as a living agent, and so to draw off from matter as 
an obstructive medium. The spiritual world, in its mag- 
nificent sweep and resplendent orbit, is not to be delayed 
or ultimately wound up by the slow retardation of a re- 
mainder of matter interpenetrating all spaces, and from 
which there is no escape. Intellectual and physical analysis 
alike lead us to a pure spiritual medium, in which the di- 
vine purpose moves freely to its accomplishment. Matter 
is as vital as mind, and both are vital with constructive 
thought, with energies that stand revealed and ex- 
pounded in universal light. There will, of course, be 
many difficulties and much delay on our part in making 
out the details of this movement, but the movement 
itself fills and satisfies the spirit. It is this satisfaction 
alone which turns all observation into insight ; all weari- 
ness into the assured sense of victory. 



i 



I 



PART 11. 

MEDIy^VAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. There is no transition in human history more 
instructive than that from Greek and Roman civilization 
to mediaeval development. The period of transfer is pro- 
tracted and the change radical. Yet the later growth 
took place on the same soil as the earlier, and felt in 
many ways its stimulating effects. The decay of the 
previous civilization had enriched the ground from which 
the later civilization derived its strength. The decline, 
on the one hand, was protracted and complete, and the 
reconstruction, on the other, slow and ample. We have 
in this bold transition a transcript of the causes which 
pull down and build up society. Greek and Roman 
development, taken together, combined many elements 
both of beauty and strength in art, in philosophy, in civic 
construction, and in social life. By its amplitude, depth, 
and vigor, by the new phases of power which it so readily 
manifested in its transfer from Greece to Italy, it gave 
promise of continuous growth. Yet its overthrow was 
absolute, with a decay from within that 'ate away all 
foundations, and a violence from without that swept 
away the entire superstructure. The longer the disaster 
was delayed, as in the Eastern Empire, the more com- 
plete was it in the end. There was no power of salvation 
or reconstruction in the old forms of life. 



92 MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

This decline was moral, social, and physical. The 
moral failure was foremost, and gave occasion to the loss 
of social and physical strength. Stoicism owed its stern- 
ness in part to the fact that it was reactionary against the 
looseness and lasciviousness prevailing about it. The 
agility of the Greek and the endurance of the Roman, 
each so extraordinary in its way and so magnified by 
great achievement, perished under a slow loss of the 
bonds of social life. This decay was not so much a decay 
of philosophy as of religion ; not of the insight and con- 
victions of the few so much as of faith and custom, potent 
with the many. The overthrow was one of the people. 
Individuals here and there attained an elevation of 
thought and purity of character unsurpassed in any pre- 
vious period. Plotinus gave the Platonic philosophy 
profound expression, and Antoninus attained a beauty 
and symmetry of moral development which still remain 
a study and a delight. But this isolated vigor did not 
suffice to check retrogression in popular character, and 
the fortunes of the people are the fortunes of civilization. 
Christianity is so distinguished a force in progress because 
it addresses itself to the common weal. While the imme- 
diate occasion of the overthrow was the inroads of the 
barbarians, civilization lost its balance in the presence of 
barbarism because it had already missed its way in its own 
growth. It is perfectly plain that very advanced forms of 
development, in passing over to yet higher social con- 
struction, may miscarry and be thrown back on to those 
primitive conditions in which physical force predomi- 
nates. 

The philosophy of Greece was not, a single potent 
syllable of it, lost in this transition. As soon as the 
conditions of inquiry returned, these speculations of the 



THE TRANSITION. 93 

older world came with them, to make more rapid the 
stages of growth. The conclusions of the past, though 
buried in the debris of ruined institutions, were not hid- 
den so deep but that the roots of the new life reached 
them as soon, or nearly as soon, as it could make use of 
them. The philosophy of the past was saved by an 
intellectual transmission, and did its work in due time 
under the abiding afHnities of thought. 

§ 2. The same assertions are true, though in a less 
degree, of the art and the law of Greece and Rome. The 
accidents of life are more potent with these than with 
philosophy, and hence the renaissance, though very real 
and very full, was attended with a sense of loss as well 
as of gain. Yet art so readily overshadows art, and law 
represses the development of law, that the later life of 
Europe owes much, in its free and fresh unfolding, to the 
thickness of the stratum that buried the past out of sight. 
Its Gothic architecture and common law both sprang up 
in regions relatively remote from the older civilization. 

It was essentially a new life, under new impulses, that 
instituted mediaeval development, and brought it forward 
to its union with modern times. The physical basis of it 
was the German tribes of the north, and the moral basis 
was Christianity. Christianity came forward in direct an- 
tagonism to the irreligion, superstition, and vice which 
were enfeebling the old world — a world that had grown 
old in its youth — and preparing the way for its collapse. 
This antagonism partially isolated the new faith, and 
helped it to maintain its purity. If it had conquered 
the empire more quickly or more completely, it would, in 
turn, have been more wholly subjected by it. Its decay 
came with its successes. Sharing the disasters of the 
empire, it yet had strength enough to survive them, and 



94 MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in a more pure and independent development it became 
the germ, social and spiritual, of coming events. 

The philosophy of the Middle Ages was almost wholly 
theological speculation. Theology ruled philosophy, and 
theology rested on the revelation and traditions of the past. 
This was a relation unfavorable for philosophy, yet it may 
have readily been historically fortunate. When truth has 
a trembling and inadequate hold on the general mind, 
when it confronts not so much speculation as passion, 
the dogmatic temper is the very instinct of self-preserva- 
tion. In difficult times, when the building is in danger of 
falling, men buttress it up rather than inquire too curi- 
ously into its foundations. To hold forth the truth and 
to propagate it was a task quite sufficient to employ all 
the strength of the mediaeval saint. In times of igno- 
rance and overthrow, doubt is far more distressing and 
disastrous than in periods of cultivation and prosperity. 
Not till the building impulse is strong, can we entertain 
the disposition to pull down. While, as a phase of philoso- 
phy, mediaeval inquiry may not seem to yield very much, 
it was, none the less, busy in deepening those convictions 
on which all truth rests. Without falling into fatalism, we 
do well to remember that, in a general way, development 
in any given period fits itself to the circumstances which 
enclose it. The philosophy of history, the growth of soci- 
ety, lie between two antagonistic assertions. Things are 
as they ought to be. Nothing is as it ought to be. Within 
themselves, things shape themselves to themselves ; in 
reference to things beyond, they call for constant modi- 
fication. Favoring conditions support that very indi- 
vidual effort which aims at reformation. A totality i| 
of wrong and a totality of right are equally impossible. 
Men, in the period under consideration, were far better 



THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. 95 

able to conform philosophy to theology than theology to 
philosophy, life to the practical experience and the waver- 
ing convictions already gained, than to a new and obscure 
exposition of duty. We have occasion, in discussing the 
philosophy of the Middle Ages, as it was the philosophy 
of theologians, to glance at the line of development in the 
Christian Church. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PATRISTIC PERIOD. 



§ I. The thing accomplished in the world's progress 
by Judaism was the acquisition, in a comparatively pure 
form, as far as power and spirituality were concerned, of 
the belief in one supreme God. This notion was, for the 
first time, grafted on to national life ; for the first time be- 
came popular, communal. Individuals had attained it in 
different periods and places, but no society had been con- 
structed upon it ; nowhere else had it shown its power to 
build men together in national strength. It was the prev- 
alence of this spiritual conception of God that prepared 
the way for the revelation of his grace in Christ. The 
path of life, as one of loving obedience, was now ready 
to be opened to the vision of men. A fundamental modi- 
fication in the conception of the relation of men to God 
was, with much misinterpretation and many backslidings, 
brought about. Christ calling out, deepening and direct- 
ing the affections, became the way, the truth, and the life. 

The assertion that moral precepts and flashes of insight 
into the laws of spiritual being, quite like those of our 
Lord, are elsewhere found in the history of the race, is 
sometimes resented as if it involved an infringement on 
his preeminent revelation. If the work and words of 
Christ were as detached and absolute as some conceive 
them to be, they would have lost all efficacy. No purity 
of their own could have made them successful aside from 



CHRISTIANITY. 97 

a natural basis and historical power. Long discipline had 
brought men forward to the point of apprehension. Christ 
gave unity, fulness, living presentation to truths which 
had appeared again and again at rare intervals, and in 
fragmentary forms. The revelation was still so large 
that it tasked all the powers of men to enter sufificiently 
into it to come under its vital discipline. Again and 
again they have failed at this very point. What was 
accomplished by Christ was to give reality, under popular 
forms of life, to a revelation of love, divine and human ; 
such reality that the conception gained within itself the 
power of growth, was planted in the soil of the affections. 

The social facts of the world have never been such as 
to afford most minds sufficient data from which to reason 
to the beneficence of God. We must have light before 
we can analyze it, or trace it to its sources. The spiritual 
temper of God must reveal itself to and in the spiritual 
temper of men ; and hence the conditions of disclosure 
have always been scant and unsatisfactory. The day has 
hardly dawned upon us, and we have not understood the 
glory of its power and its sweet living peace. 

Reality in our relations to God, social construction 
under brotherly affection, on earth peace and good will, 
these were the gifts of Christ. They would ultimately 
lead to speculation and philosophy, but, for the time 
being, they were very remote from it. Those to whom 
they were intrusted, and those who received them as 
living impulses, were plain men, Avho were thoroughly 
occupied with the achievement of a quickened and puri- 
fied life. They offered to the world its best gift, a life 
pregnant with spiritual truth, germs of growing convic- 
tion. It was this preeminently practical temper, this in- 
dividual development, this search for salvation in society, 
7 



98 THE PATRISTIC PERIOD. 

this reconstruction of men in a Kingdom of Heaven, that 
saved Christianity from sinking into the inanities of pre- 
mature speculation. It was this that enabled it to wage 
a long and successful strife against Gnosticism, more in- 
genious in thought than vital in practice. Paul, the most 
intellectually active of those who propagated the new 
faith, was corrected and restrained in all his reasoning by 
a burning and loving zeal for the immediate well-being 
of men. Theology, in its later history, unwisely ex- 
tending, and making unduly rigid, the glowing concep- 
tions of Paul, has illustrated the great danger which al- 
ways attends on a philosophy of faith, running in advance 
of real development — the danger of mistaking our tran- 
sient conceptions of ultimate facts for the facts them- 
selves. What the world wanted, what it still wants, was 
more empirical data from which to reason, a disclosure in 
the lives of men of the truths under discussion. 

The universality of the salvation preached by Christ 
was a truth so novel and so profound, that while it was 
forced at once upon the attention of the disciples, it taxed 
to the utmost their powers of apprehension. Once ac- 
cepted, it became a strong defence against the narrowing 
force of speculation. The incipient faith was saved not 
only from the rigidity of Judaism, but from every variety 
of misleading dogma, in its contact with diverse commu- 
nities. Catholicity was its first contention. The church 
universal could not become local, and so lose its inheri- 
tance of truth. The persecution which it encountered 
helped also to hold it fast in this region of practical life. 
The repression it suffered was one which nothing but 
love could overcome, or enable men to bear. There was 
a large amount of comparatively sound philosophy cur- 
rent in the Greek and Roman world that prepared the 



1 



CHURCH IN ALEXANDRIA. 99 

way for new forms of thought, but this philosophy had 
achieved very Httle in social, organic expression ; and it 
had, therefore, but slight bearing on the propagation of 
a faith which was one of a transformed and purified life. 
This philosophy simply gave to individuals, like particles 
of steel under electric currents, a little quicker disposi- 
tion to feel and to obey the new power. 

§ 2. The earlier church was occupied with the dissemi- 
nation of a faith whose chief expression was practical ; 
and only partially with its theoretic defence. It found 
itself in too close contact with hard conditions to spend 
its strength in a speculative unfolding of its own beliefs, 
or in an effort to harmonize them with the beliefs of 
others. It accepted the facts of conflict and reconstruc- 
tion, and gave its strength to them. When, at the open- 
ing of the fourth century, in connection with the difficult 
doctrine of the Trinity, the church entered on the task 
of sharp discrimination, it suffered not a little in temper, 
mingled with its statements notions alien to its own rev- 
elation, and pushed the definitions of doctrine in advance 
of clear thought and living experience. 

Perhaps the best example of an enlargement of Chris- 
tian thought by Greek philosophy, without drawing it 
aside from its own direction, or vitiating it, is found in 
the church in Alexandria, more especially in Clement and 
Origen. Yet their conceptions of the character and meth- 
ods of God, just and liberal as they were, suffered this 
disadvantage, that they fed the speculative and divisive, 
rather than the practical and unifying, temper, and, in- 
stead of winning the liberty of the individual, called out 
the bitter and distracting cry of heresy. 

Our summation is simply this. The Patristic period 
was one chiefly occupied with social, spiritual facts, and 



lOO THE PATRISTIC PERIOD. 

SO far was much in advance of mere speculation. It was 
fortunate that philosophy was so long held in check, 
as the inner life on which it was to proceed was not yet 
strong enough, the perverting external conditions were 
too strong, to render its conclusions sound and invigorat- 
ing. Inevitable and desirable as philosophy is, it is al- 
ways to be dreaded for the dogmatic cast it is liable to 
assume, and for the bonds it thus puts afresh on the liv- 
ing processes it itself holds. Philosophy must rest loose- 
ly on the mind, if there is to be continuous growth ; and 
as long as there is growth, its data are constantly chang- 
ing. The world has occasion to be devoutly thankful for 
that primitive period of simple spiritual prosperity which 
enabled it to pass through, without fatal loss, the thorny 
and perplexed paths of theology. 

The Eastern church became more immediately barren, 
occupied with idle lines of speculation, than the Western 
church. The theosophy of Neo-Platonism opening up 
vague, impractical inquiries, for which the mind has no 
sufficient data, was present with it in the many nice and 
narrow subdivisions of faith into which it fell on the doc- 
trine of the Trinity. No conception is less capable of final 
definition, or needs to be kept more open and free, than 
that of God. It is to our thoughts what the overhanging 
canopy of the heavens is to the atmospheric phenomena 
that hide it, illuminate it, reveal it, and sink infinitely f 
below it. -Construction and definition here become con- 
striction and death. The futile speculation of the Eastern 
church was the evaporation of thought, and the affections 
perished under the chilling process. A lifeless theology 
spread, like a brazen heaven over a barren earth, and 
extinguished a life it was intended to nourish. 

The Western church took but little part in the debate. 

"♦■■1: 

m 



LATIN CHURCH. lOI 

Its inheritance of doctrinal discussion came to it through 
St. Augustine rather than Athanasius. The questions 
which interested it pertained to the nature of man and 
the government of God, bore more immediately on prac- 
tical morality, and filled the mind with the present issues 
of life. After the long and troubled sleep of the Dark 
Ages, mediaeval philosophy returned in the Latin church 
— occupied in the intervening period in defending Chris- 
tianity and propagating it among barbarous tribes — to a 
series of inquiries which were intended to define the re- 
lations and duties of man, and the enveloping spiritual 
conditions within which he is contained. 

Large life is built by many forces. Wise speculation is 
only one among them. The Greek church manifested a 
more comprehensive, more subtile, more searching spirit 
of inquiry than the Latin church. Yet this fact did little 
to check its steady decline. The Latin church laid hold 
of customs and traditions, deepened and extended them, 
and so built up institutions to which a great future was 
to be given. " Away with the man who is ever seeking," 
never finding, became the spirit of its movement. As 
men needed unity, safe conditions of social life, this nar- 
row temper was fit to the occasion. The great leader and 
doctrinal expositor of its early history, St. Augustine, 
was a man of an intense, dogmatic, and narrow mind. 
Individual freedom went for little with him. He was pre- 
pared to build a church on unconcessive, unflinching doc- 
trine. He had in his own convictions the material of an 
immediate and definite construction. His work, deeply 
at fault as it was within itself, was in keeping with the 
occasion. The creed he had to offer could yield support to 
powerful ecclesiasticism, and ecclesiasticism was the want 
of a period ready to dissolve into the shreds of barbarism. 



CHAPTER II. 

THEMES OF DISCUSSION IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Three closely allied questions especially occupied 
mediaeval philosophy : the nature of God, the nature of 
man, the government of God. They were discussed in 
their theological bearings. The dogmatic uses of thought 
overshadowed its speculative relations. These questions 
were practical ones, not only because religious faith was a 
great social interest, but because these conceptions con- 
trolled the pursuits of the best men of the time, and were 
effective in shaping conduct and character. The three 
points are closely interdependent, and the elevation and 
scope of action turn upon them. Impossible as it is to 
make an exhaustive statement of any one of them, we 
can discuss no one of them without being led to the con- 
sideration of all three ; and no other discussion will so lay 
down for us the circuit of motives as this. It is wholly 
in vain that men protest against it as beyond the range of 
knowledge. The very mystery that clings to these topics 
enhances our interest in them. The elasticity and free- 
dom of life lie in this direction, and here they are sought 
by all large spirits. Those who forbid entrance are com- 
pelled, generation after generation, to renew their denial 
with protestations based upon a new set of reasons. 

Nor are there any questions propounded to us more 
frequently by the circumstances in which we are, nor any 



THREE QUESTIONS. I03 

on which new light is more constantly cast in the inner 
experience of earnest, ethical minds. We cannot rise into 
the highest realm of action, the relation of man to man, 
the relation of the present to the future, without being 
led to seek the clews of conduct in a better understanding 
of our own nature, of the immediate spiritual conditions 
in which we are enclosed, of the ultimate purpose or ulti- 
mate drift of that creative or evolutionary movement of 
which we form a part. 

The one central impulse which governed the minds of 
men in this period, in the consideration of these ques- 
tions, was their relation to Christianity. Practical faith 
had been kept alive by extended missionary work ; it had 
moulded and was still moulding dogmatic expression 
under its own living power. That which sustained dis- 
cussion was not so much speculative interest as a desire 
for doctrines that should express and support a faith that 
was being built up, in the Latin church, into a very broad, 
and, in spite of severe drawbacks, into a very beneficent 
power. 

There came in, to modify the beliefs which Christianity 
had reached along its own line of revelation and in its 
protracted labors for the renovation of society, the philos- 
ophy of Aristotle and Plato. Conceptions due to these 
great minds had permeated all philosophic speculation, 
and more or less penetrated the church in its several 
stages of progress. Nor had the decay of knowledge and 
the hard pressure of disastrous times, though they served 
to reduce the influence of pure philosophy, by any means 
destroyed it. Doubtless, Christianity owed to these con- 
ditions the power to maintain its practical energy, and so 
the power to defend itself against speculations alien to its 
own temper ; but the intellectual atmosphere in which it 



104 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

unfolded was Aristotelian and Platonic, and its concep- 
tions were called on to adjust themselves to these best 
and most vigorous phases of thought. 

These same influences, in the Middle Ages, came in- 
directly to the Latin church through the beliefs of the 
Jews and Arabs, who had been profoundly affected by 
them. The unusual activity of the Arabs in intellectual 
attainments as well as in conquest made their speculative 
conclusions influential, in spite of the national prejudices 
and religious convictions which divided them from western 
Europe. The Greeks, also, before, and still more after, 
the fall of Constantinople, renewed their intercourse with 
the West, and were active in restoring Greek culture. 
Thus Greek philosophy came a second time, chiefly in 
its elder form, in distinct contact with Christianity, and 
that, too, when the sense of collision was greatly reduced. 
These beliefs, entering slowly by diverse channels, helped 
to awaken thought, and gave occasion for the readjust- 
ment of doctrines. The speculation brought to bear on 
the three leading questions, though narrow, was ex- 
tremely subtile, and by manifestly exhausting the terms 
at its disposal gave occasion to the next period. 

§ 2. There was one discussion of a purely philosophical 
character which came to this period directly from Greek 
dialectics, and was treated with endless diligence and differ- 
ence of opinion, that of realism, the relation of the class to 
the individual. The first occasion for the inquiry arose in 
connection with the Sophists. Their feats of proof and 
disproof were chiefly a legerdemain of words, the word 
reappearing each time under a new and disguised mean- 
ing. Definition, therefore, became a first necessity in 
dispersing these sophistries, and in restoring the cohe- 
rence of truth. It is general words that require definition, 



REALISM. 105 

and hence the inquiry arises : What is it that lies back 
of a general term, controls our definition, and gives real- 
ity to our assertions? This discussion occupied men's 
thoughts two thousand years, and has not yet entirely 
disappeared. It affords a good example of the extended 
interlock of truth. Different conclusions here have arisen 
from diverse habits of thought, and have led to very 
diverse systems. The question is one of analysis, in which 
we settle what are primitive and what are secondary forms 
of being; and what each contributes to the final result we 
call knowledge. 

In its more simple form this discussion gave rise to 
three inquiries, whether genera have or or have not a 
substantial existence? If they have a substantial exist- 
ence, whether it is material or immaterial ? Whether it 
is apart from objects or in them ? The first question was 
answered by Plato and Aristotle alike in the affirmative, 
and by the nominalists, in the later stages of the discus- 
sion, in the negative. The second was answered by Plato ; 
ideas, generic entities, have an immaterial existence ; while 
Aristotle responded, they have a material one. This was 
the great distinction between the two philosophers. The 
third question served only to further define this difference. 
Plato held that ideas exist apart from and prior to in- 
dividual objects. Aristotle affirmed that they exist in 
these objects, and are inseparable from them. These 
three forms of diversity were concisely expressed in the 
phrases : Universalia ante rem. Universalia in re. Uni- 
versalia post rem. The words, Universalia post rem^ indi- 
cate that the general notion arises simply under the action 
of the mind, surrounded by specific forms of being. 

This discussion followed from the effort to attain well- 
defined concepts with a certified value, and, according to 



I06 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the method in which it was settled, gave one or another 
degree of force to general terms, and to our knowledge 
under them. If Plato was correct, each of these terms 
stands for an ultimate and eternal form of being, in its 
own order creative. While this opinion magnifies, in the 
highest degree, the certainty of knowledge and the grasp 
of the mind on the material of knowledge, it involves 
itself at once, by this very breadth of assertion, in endless 
difficulties. General terms are so changeable, there are 
so many cross classifications established for variable and 
secondary ends, so many more can be instituted any 
moment for similar purposes, that it seems preposterous 
to assign permanent being to the vague, erratic, and shift- 
ing notions that lie back of words. It is, indeed, aston- 
ishing that so many lines of order, so many productive 
generalizations, can be instituted among things ; but it 
hardly follows that each one of them, overlapping each 
other in so many ways, stands for a distinct, ultimate 
form of being. If there were a few permanent genera 
readily distinguishable from all other forms of being, it 
would be more possible to give them this rank. Even 
then they would stand quite too much apart from each 
other to expound the world in its unity. 

The nominalist, on the other hand, was liable so to 
weaken the concept, to make it such a variable, acci- 
dental, and transient combination of impressions as to 
lead at once to scepticism. If our fundamental notions 
have no stability, if they are as changeable as the experi- 
ences which give rise to them, if they are mere reflections 
of that experience, then our best assertions concerning 
them gather no scope, and indicate nothing but momen- 
tary relations in the intellectual landscape that is gliding 
by us. What, how certain, how permanent are the con- 



GENERAL TERMS. 10/ 

cepts which gather our knowledge into knots and make 
the network of truth a strong and retentive receptacle 
of experience, become primary questions in settling the 
bounds of belief and unbelief. 

In determining the meaning of words we strike still 
deeper, and settle the character of all knowledge. Knowl- 
edge either becomes, under this inquiry, fluctuating and 
relative in all its parts, like shadows, definable only so long 
as they last, or it has in it absolute lines of order which 
make it coherent through and through, and give its more 
variable and more permanent portions a fixed significancy 
in reference to each other and to the coherent ideas that 
underlie them all. The cross relations we institute from 
our own particular positions, for our own special ends, 
arise incidentally, yet with a real meaning in them. 
Trees that are planted in rows take on at once diagonal 
relations. 

Here we strike hard against the one problem of phi- 
losophy : a difference in general terms themselves. There 
are simple notions, antecedent to all the facts that arise 
under them, eternally the same, whatever may be the spe- 
cific forms of those facts, and identical with themselves in 
every possible presentation of the phenomena subject to 
them. Such a notion is time. All events involve it, and 
involve it in the same way. Difficulty — a simple, empiri- 
cal characteristic of action — is one of infinitely variable 
forms, does not apply to all actions, and applies in endless 
degrees and ways. The one notion follows experience — 
post rem ; the other precedes it — ante rem. If Plato had 
given to these simple notions, always identical with them- 
selves and precedent to the experience which they ex- 
pound, an eternal existence in the reason, whose forms 
they are, he would have attained that fundamental truth of 



I08 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

philosophy which, even in its obscure presence, gave color 
and force to what he affirmed. The shifting generaliza- 
tions of experience, held firm in the primary forms of 
order by these cardinal ideas, are the incidents and acci- 
dents of an experience made profoundly valid by the 
validity of the fundamental movement. 

Those, on the other hand, who lay hold of such a gen- 
eralization of action under experience as this of difficulty, 
making it the type of all our knowledge, find that they 
have a concept which is measured by every man differ- 
ently. There is no absolute difficulty. All difficulties 
are relative to the means employed, and the person em- 
ploying them. Our affirmations concerning difficulty 
change with every change of circumstances, and may nev- 
er coincide between different persons or different periods. 
We float on a stream whose experiences are unlike in all 
degrees, and never repeat themselves. 

Yet our knowledge involves uniformity as well as vari- 
ety. Our notions are in part absolute, and predetermine 
our experience, and, in part, are variable and derived from 
our experience. We cannot arrive at the complex intel- 
lectual world, in its certainties and its doubts, without a 
just apprehension of the notions, one and all, under which 
it is constructed. Knowledge is relative in the measure in 
which it is dependent on empirical concepts, is absolute 
in the measure in which it rests on rational ideas. The 
nature of notions is thus fundamental in all truth. If 
the mind cannot, in any instance, verify to itself its own 
ideas, it is, indeed, hopelessly afloat among the change- 
able terms of experience. If it can do this, it thereby 
imparts stable relations to all the manifold phenomena of 
being. 

Another truth of much moment involved in this doc-. 



GENERA. 109 

trine of concepts is that of the nature of genera in natural 
objects. Are these classes as much extemporized, as much 
dependent on our immediate purpose or changeable ap- 
prehension, as are the nouns, adjectives, verbs, by which, 
in conversation, we distinguish infinitely variable shades 
of difference from each other? Do all agreements and dis- 
ag-reements melt back into one undivided mobile mass the 
moment we lift our speech off them, as much in the one 
case as in the other? Here we come again on a long, hard 
battle, not yet ended, over the ultimate nature of genera 
among living things. Among inorganic things differences 
are often final, and when there are between them inter- 
mediates, these are the results of intermixtures rather 
than of any changeability in primitive elements. In living 
things, the discussion tends to the result that genera do 
stand for at least permanent positions taken along the 
path of progress, that development does not proceed in 
indifference to genera. All positions are not alike in 
their stability. There are points of stable and of unstable 
equilibrium, and the problem of life must be studied in 
connection with them both. The development of living 
things is not like the motion of a sphere indifferent to 
directions and positions; it is like that of a polygon, 
which has lines of movement and faces of rest. 

Just concepts, which lay hold of permanent distinc- 
tions and define them in their true force, are, therefore, 
supreme results of knowledge in living things. No devel- 
opment whatever weakens this knowledge, any more than 
marching effaces the camps which an army has occupied, 
or the positions it has defended. The validity of knowl- 
edge, the method of argument, the object of investiga- 
tion in science, all turn on this question of general terms. 
It is plain, therefore, that this discussion has stood in the 



no THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 



closest relation to the differences which lie between an 
empirical and an intuitive mode of inquiry, and to the 
manner in which the two should be united. Realism 
favored a rational, idealistic type of philosophy. Special 
forms owe their significance only to the creative idea 
which they contain. The universal precedes the partic- 
ular ; and if the mind can trace this development, it has 
small occasion to dwell on empirical distinctions. Nom- 
inalism, on the other hand, affiliated with empiricism. 
Individual objects are to be studied as the substan- 
tial facts of the world. Words simply stand for them, 
and owe their entire interpretation to them. The partic- 
ular goes before the general. The general is compre- 
hensible only in connection with it, is the impression left 
by it on the sensitive, receptive processes of mind. The 
stability of the general is no other or greater than the 
stability of the particular. The comprehending process 
is developed along this one path of empirical determi- 
nation. 

In the progress of scientific inquiry nominalism gained 
ground. The two justified each other. As science and 
philosophy fell into opposition, they tended toward ad- 
verse conclusions in this discussion of the nature of con- 
cepts. Philosophy stood by realism and magnified the 
relation of the general to the particular, while science 
struggled for a new method, and directed its first attention 
to particul-ars, as holding the secrets of all knowledge. 

This slow development of nominalism helped the mind 
to shake off the inapprehensible and mystical, to make 
its sensuous knowledge definite, and to put back of it, 
in their most simple forms, those terms of reason which 
expound it. Speculation, which, in an imaginative way, 
assumes its own premises, has nothing to restrain it but 



1 



REALISM AND NOMINALISM. Ill 

the coherence of the logical process by which they are 
unfolded, and thus philosophy becomes increasingly van- 
ishing lines of thought, pursued through a thin, impalpable 
medium of fancy, with no verification beyond themselves, 
without beginning of days or end of years, so far as the 
historic progress of events is concerned. Nominalism 
helped to awaken the mind from the dreams of a logical 
imagination, to give it definite terms of inquiry in expe- 
rience, and to attach the thread of its speculative web, 
at each new stretch, to some real object. Its conclusions 
were thus no longer loose, waving lines floating in the 
air, which one might see or not see according to his 
position. 

This question of realism, touching so widely and so 
profoundly the central points of philosophy, necessarily 
branched off in many ways, and approached a solution 
but slowly, with much confusion of thought. It virtually 
involves the priority of mind or of matter. If material 
relations are antecedent to mental ones, if both these re- 
lations are in continual flux, then the fundamental prin- 
ciple of nominalism is correct. We proceed exclusively 
from the particular to the general, and the general is only 
the latest grouping in experience of special qualities and 
objects. But if mind, as the one universal constructive 
agent, precedes all physical products, then ideas — the 
ideas under which the creative mind advances — are funda- 
mental, and alone bring light to events. Realism thus 
arises from a tendency to magnify mind and the rational 
conceptions referrible to it. It also serves, in its devel- 
opment, to enhance this tendency. 

All the scope and stability of thought are referrible to 
those antecedent rational notions under which experience 
arises. These furnish the points and lines of triangula- 



112 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tion from which all measurements are made. Without 
them our generalizations could not transcend Our obser- 
vations. No sense of generality would accompany any 
uniformity of qualities or actions which might offer them- 
selves to us. It is the notion of causation which makes 
experience intellectually homogeneous within itself, and 
extends its truths to the ends of the earth. Uniformities 
have no footing in the court of reason without it, and 
must fall back on sensation and habit, without even the 
power to explain the habit induced by them. Habit pre- 
supposes causation. It is a definite form of causation 
which has induced it. 

The fact that we interpret the word so directly under 
the methods of our own inner experience, that things 
offer themselves to us, therefore, as active, and that ac- 
tion chiefly interests us, and that our general words, as 
has been pointed out in mythology, stand for personified 
forms of action, greatly helps this doctrine of ideas. 
Plato's philosophy offered it in its most exalted and most 
extended form, but in a form that can gain no coherence 
except by a passage into pure idealism. Ideas, then, as 
logical entities, issue in that logical development which 
is the unfolding of the intellectual world, the only world 
of real being. Hegelianism is thus the ultimate result of 
Platonic realism. The world is a thought process, and 
progresses through personal consciousness as the arena in 
which it takes place. 

The many implications of this doctrine of concepts are 
shown in the unfortunate, yet derived, use of words to 
which it has given occasion. The realism of the intu- 
itionist is the corrected realism of Plato, yet is quite dif- 
ferent from it. It asserts, not the reality of ideas as ulti- 
mate terms of being, but the reality of matter and mind 



I 



CONCEPTS. 113 

as permanent cooperative agents in all phenomena. Later 
idealism is not the assertion simply of ideas, but the 
exclusion of those physical phenomena by which those 
ideas were expressed to Plato and to Aristotle. 

Not only did the doctrine of concepts in its many 
entanglements cover the questions which lie between 
intuitionalists and empiricists; it extended to all those 
differences which define the nature of ideas, their relation 
to the mind, and their relation to those sensuous experi- 
ences which they enclose. No form of philosophy can 
escape, either in its connection with other systems or in 
the construction of its own inner scheme, this inquiry. A 
solution of so comprehensive a problem is not reached 
till we are able to define matter and mind, physical quali- 
ties and intellectual products, sensations and ideas, in 
their circle of interdependence — in short, till we have a 
philosophy. Since, then, this question covers a philoso- 
phy, implies a complete analytical penetration of all 
forms of being, it would be shallow on our part to make 
light of the endless phases and slight differences under 
which, through the lengthened centuries, it drew itself 
along. 

§ 3. This inquiry, leading to a more exact measurement 
of the terms of knowledge, and modifying in many ways 
the method of thought, has played a most important part 
in philosophy. We need, therefore, to consider more care- 
fully its secondary phases. We start with the extreme 
realism of Plato, whose hierarchy of ideas remains unveri- 
fiable, and very unmanageable within itself. These enti- 
ties stand with each other on no terms of interaction and 
subordination. We are compelled to give them relation, 
not as realities but as concepts, thought-products. Then 
comes the softened realism of Aristotle. This, taken in 
8 



114 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

connection with natural classes, seems a much more sim- 
ple doctrine, yet it leads to much the same confusion as 
the theory of Plato, when considered in connection with 
the loose, changeable generalizations of ordinary speech. 
Certainly there is no common term of substantial being 
in the things we call pleasant or disagreeable, base or 
grand. Even in natural genera, the view fails on careful 
analysis. The real object — say a horse — belonging to a 
given class, is individual in every part of it. Take away 
in succession its specific forms, and there is no remainder 
in substantial being which we can call its generic force. 
The generic being is as much a creation of the mind as is 
the potential statue contained in a block of marble. Ge- 
neric qualities are affirmed not on the ground of sensuous 
impressions, but on the ground of intellectual relations 
between physical qualities. They arise wholly under the 
ideal notion of likeness. 

From realism let us pass at once to extreme nominal- 
ism, as expounded by Roscellinus. According to this 
view we are dealing in general terms with words and 
things only. The things, in their separate forms, are 
real. The words by which we designate them are also 
real, and these two sum up the realities involved in 
speech. If this analysis were sufficient, we should not be 
able to distinguish between common and proper nouns. 
The difference does not lie in the fact that the one noun 
is applicable to many things and the other to a single 
thing. John Smith applies, as a designation, to many 
persons, and may recall any one of them ; the name is 
not, therefore, a common noun. In answering the ques- 
tion, wherein lies the distinction between the common 
and the individual term ? we reach at once the second 
form of nominalism, conceptualism. It would seem, 



CONCEPTS. 115 

however, better to regard it as a distinct theory than as 
a variety of nominalism. The implications of the two 
theories are very different. Nominalism seems so very 
bald in its statement as to make it difficult to understand 
how, on its own ground, it should find entertainment. 
It secures it chiefly by its affiliation with extreme empiri- 
cism. When a single object — say, a snow-bird — is first 
seen, the impression it makes is purely specific. If it 
receives a designation, the word is a proper noun. The 
sign and the thing signified are all that we have. If like 
birds are repeatedly seen, the points of agreement are 
distinguished, and the word becomes a common noun. 
If, however, the mind is purely receptive in its knowl- 
edge, if generic impressions are merely repeated impres- 
sions, then we have no new terms of thought in the 
later as compared w4th the earlier experience. We have 
simply an extended association, and our analysis must 
remain as before — a word, and the objects with which it 
is connected. The moment, however, we restore to the 
mind its initiative in knowledge, this statement seems 
wholly inadequate. A third term is called for — a con- 
cept, a recognition of the qualities in which the objects 
classed together agree. This concept becomes the con- 
necting link between the common noun and the things 
to which it is applied. There is a relation between these 
objects, and this relation is indicated by the name. 

Occam held this belief, and it seems to us to offer a 
complete analysis. We have specific objects which have 
substantial existence. We have words which, as written 
or spoken, have, for the time being, a sensuous existence. 
We have a product of mind, an activity of mind, — an ac- 
tivity and a product of mind are identical — which unites 
these two : the words and the things included in the 



tl6 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

classes they designate. The meaning of the word and 
the agreement of the objects are the same — a mental 
recognition. This concept has that form of being which 
belongs to mental acts — is knowledge. There are these 
three things included in knowledge as contained in gen- 
eral terms: the objects empirically known, the relation 
between them intellectually known, and this knowledge 
made definite and manageable by a word, a symbol, 
whose office it is to designate and retain this con- 
nection. 

To these four forms of answers two others have been 
added by combination and modification. Thomas Aqui- 
nas accepted all three formulae : anU rem, in re, post rem. 
The general idea exists before the particular object, in 
the creative mind of God. It also exists in essence in 
the objects which come under it, and as a concept in the 
minds of men who later unite them in a class. In the 
first assertion we have not the realism of Plato, but only 
conceptualism. The relation of time is indifferent in the 
analysis. In the second assertion, under the notion of 
essence, we have substantial being assigned to an intel- 
lectual relation. We have the realism of Aristotle. If 
essences and specific attributes exist together, we have 
double being in one and the same object. Attributes, 
however, exhaust the object. The relation of attributes 
is a mental product called out by the attributes them- 
selves. It "was objected to nominalism, even under the 
form of conceptualism, that if there was no common 
essence uniting individuals in the genus, then, by a parity 
of reasoning, there was no whole uniting the parts in the 
individual, say, the man. The parts thus exist separately. 
Their union becomes solely an act of thought. Substan- 
tial coherence is everywhere lost. This seems at first a 



CONCEPTS. 117 

formidable objection, but is not so if truly apprehended. 
In a statue the parts are physically united simply by 
coherence in space relations. All other union between 
them, all art union, is a product of thought, and sus- 
tained by thought only. In the living man the members 
are united in space and also in a vital circulation and 
interplay of offices. Yet the unity of these changeable 
and complex facts in a man is not something beyond 
the facts, but the facts themselves as understood by the 
mind. The unity exists in a living man, as the meaning 
exists in words. It is the potential power of certain 
facts over mind, by which they cease to be barren, sensu- 
ous impression, and call out rational insight. This notion 
of essence is another example of a tertium quid of which 
no intelligible use can be made. If it is sensuous, then 
we have not gotten beyond the separation of the senses; 
if it is intellectual, then the unity is still referrible solely 
to the mind. All unity is intellectual in its origin and 
intellectual in its apprehension. 

That which gives color to this objection, in the case of 
living things, is the recognition of the plastic power we 
term life. This controls the organic structure, and is the 
ground of its relations. But this life is no more generic 
essence than it is specific attributes. We are compelled 
to accept life not as a physical entity, but as a spiritual 
power, the ground of spiritual, that is, invisible, rela- 
tions. Life stands to its phenomena as mind to its 
phenomena. In neither case are the phenomena physi- 
cal, though they are expressed through physical things. 
Meaning always lurks somewhere back of its instruments. 
Unity of all sorts can only be an intellectual product, and 
referrible to an intellectual power. 

A sixth phase of belief, in connection with concepts, is 



Il8 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

relationlsm. This has been recently urged by Dr. Abbot 
in his work on scientific theism. 

The validity of knowledge turns on the reality of 
things and on the connection of the concept with them 
as their true expression. Interpretation depends for its 
value on words in combination as possessing a permanent 
meaning, essentially the same for all, and on the power 
of each man to confirm his own apprehension of that 
meaning. If the meaning is unstable, or incapable of a 
uniform rendering, then interpretation is simply subject- 
ing the mind to one set of many impressions. 

The question, however, of the validity of knowledge is 
not whether our impressions concerning things corre- 
spond to things-in-themselves. Things-in-themselves is 
an arbitrary notion of which we know nothing, and in 
which we can have no interest. The only questions of 
moment are : Do the same objects make like impressions 
on different persons ? Do they make like impressions on 
us, by virtue of stable qualities, at different times? If 
they do, then we have stable, that is, real, knowledge. 
Any correspondence between our impressions and the 
objects which occasion them is as unnecessary as be- 
tween the meaning of a sentence and the characters in 
which it is written. That the sensuous qualities of ob- 
jects express real attributes in them, we cannot doubt. 
This is involved in causation. These effects must stand 
for their own causes. The presence of the causes is pre- 
cisely what the effects afifirm. The relative uniformity 
and perpetuity of these relations are involved in the 
uniformity of nature, itself certified by causation. The 
same causes must produce the same effects, and the same 
causes are unchangeable within themselves. Given terms 
must, therefore, be faithful to their own expression, their 



RELATIONISM. II9 

own laws. This reasoning is so consonant with experi- 
ence, and so constantly confirmed by it, that very few do 
doubt, or can give any other reason than a vague distrust 
for doubting, the vaHdity of knowledge. The tendency 
to trust is so deeply planted in the constitution of the 
mind that it much more frequently becomes excessive 
than fails in its office. This phase of unbelief always 
implies a failure to accept the authority of the mind in 
its own assertions, and this is a type of wisdom which 
belongs only to those who are wiser than it is written. 

Relationism affirms the valid correspondence of the 
concept with the things which give occasion to it. It 
does not, however, as a doctrine of general terms, hold 
any tenable ground as opposed to conceptualism. We 
cannot, in relationism, put four terms in place of three : 
the class name, the concept it covers, the particular 
objects, and the qualities which the two last terms have 
in common. If relationism differentiates itself by affirm- 
ing class qualities, our knowledge of them and of the 
agreement of the concept with them, it is slipping back 
into realism. General qualities have no existence aside 
from special qualities, and admittedly specific qualities 
are not those covered by the concept. The significance, 
the intellectual significance of any one object in reference 
to other objects, is the result of comparison, and this 
result it is which the concept expresses and retains. 
This meaning is derived directly from many particular 
objects, and there intervenes between the concept and 
these particulars no third term with which the concept 
stands in agreement. The question involved is one of the 
power of the mind to lay its own stepping-stones. The 
meaning of a sentence is not something additional to 
the words, and additional to the impression made upon 



120 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the mind by them. The nature of language is to call out 
certain ideas in the mind that comprehends it. Under- 
standing a sentence is simply allowing it, by virtue of its 
representative power, to evoke these ideas. Studying a 
sentence is giving it that careful attention which enables 
its physical signs to produce fully their intellectual j 
effects. Concepts are the intellectual products or mean- 
ings of things. All that is requisite for their construction 
are sensuous objects, and the power of understanding 
them. There is no intangible something which stands 
for generic qualities, which hovers between sensations 
and the general notions under which the mind marshals 
them. The validity of our knowledge does not turn on 
our power to affirm any correspondence between the con- 
cept and something objective to it, any more than the 
actuality of pain means an agreement between it and 
some quality in the world from which we have suffered 
injury. The validity of general terms turns on our 
ability to translate into intellectual expression the signs 
of thought before us. All that we have occasion to 
affirm is, that these sensuous signs do have permanent 
causal relations in reference to each other and in refer- 
ence to mind, and hence that the concept is a second 
step of knowledge, following on that of sensations ; is, 
like the sensations themselves, a mental term in real 
connection with outward things, whose dependencies it 
expresses, " The agreements we are dealing with are 
agreements between sensations, and not an agreement of 
sensations with things-in-themselves, or an agreement 
of concepts with some form of being corresponding to 
them. The concept stands simply for the intellectual 
recognition of a resemblance between sensuous impres- 
sions. There is in things a real ground for this intellect- 



RELATIONISM. 121 

ual action, but the only realities involved are the objects, 
the mental activities they awaken, and the words which 
give permanent form to these products of thought. 

§ 4. The nature of things and the nature of concepts, 
as offering two distinct forms of being, physical and men- 
tal, or as indicating only different phases of one form of 
being, either physical or mental, must receive solution 
not from the doctrine of general terms, but from consid- 
erations involved in idealism, realism, and materialism. 
Yet the conclusions we reach as to the ultimate forms of 
being will affect our theory of general terms. It is unfort- 
unate that the word realism should appear in both dis- 
cussions, when the things expressed by it are so wide 
apart in the two cases. The concept must stand in per- 
manent connection with special qualities, whether it is 
first present as a general idea and is later specialized in 
those particular forms, or is the fruit of insight directed 
at the outset toward objects, or is the passive product in 
the receptive tissue of mind of the repeated presence of 
material things. In each case there is a difference in the 
form of being attributed to the concept or to the object, 
but no difference in the fact of the connection of the two 
with each other. 

There are three forms of general terms which so far 
correspond to the three theories just referred to as to 
afford respectively convenient examples in enforcing each 
of them. There are primitive, simple notions pres- 
ent to the mind, which it specializes in its experience 
in a great variety of ways. The special use implies the 
general idea ; the general idea is not derived from the 
particular facts which it expounds. In this relation 
idealism finds its defence. The notion of causation is 
such an idea. Each case under it calls for the light of 



122 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the antecedent conception for its solution. In each 
instance we are dealing with a purely Intellectual relation, 
and not with the sensuous terms Involved In it. To re- 
turn to a comparison we have so often found Illustrative, 
we are not seeking the meaning of any one sentence, 
but we are dealing with the previous implication, that 
every sentence has a meaning. The mind, in this notion, 
and in many others, comes so furnished as to fit a great 
variety of particulars to its own constructive framework. 

There Is another class of general words which are in 
their formation especially favorable to the theory of 
realism. In them the mind shows the very variable 
way in which It unites objects to meet its own change- 
able ends. They are those general terms which do not 
express natural classes, with relatively permanent and 
extended agreements, but which mark some one corre- 
spondence, often transient In itself and transient in the 
purposes of thought subserved by It, between things and 
actions remote in all other relations. These are the 
classifications of ordinary speech, such words as swift 
and slow, bright and dull, hard and soft. These classes 
lie often between qualities which are intellectual rather 
than sensuous, as frugal and extravagant, agreeable and 
disagreeable, eccentric and commonplace. It is difificult 
to regard these generalizations as the result of a purely 
reflective or a purely receptive process. They involve in 
their formation many accidental changes of external con- 
ditions and changeable points of view under them. They 
are the products of two sets of causes, the diverse nature 
of things, and the diverse ends the mind pursues in deal- 
ing with them. The two factors, matter and mind, events 
and uses, stand in equilibrium in them. 

The general terms which express natural classes are, 



GENERAL TERMS. 1 23 

on the other hand, so dependent on uniform, sensuous 
impressions, arise so inevitably in all minds as the daily 
result of experience, that they readily lend themselves 
to materialism, and become the expository types of its 
methods of development. The sensuous impressions, in 
these cases comparatively obvious, regular, and constant, 
leave, as a deposit of their protracted action, a general 
notion and a general term. It is thus easy to overlook 
the definite, intellectual activity which has given occasion 
to a concept. The mind takes on the appearance of 
simple receptivity when it is truly active. 

The certainty of knowledge in the three cases is very 
different. An ideal movement, pure in kind, carries 
absolute conviction. We have in it only to trust the 
mind itself, to walk by sight, and this we do readily. 
When we come to those discussions which determine the 
transient positions the mind is taking, subject to its own 
mobility, and the infinite variability of things, we find 
occasion for much painstaking if our impressions are to 
assume any general character, and be worthy of registra- 
tion as a significant part of human experience. The 
landscape of shifting phenomena leaves undefined any 
one point of observation, and assumes new appearances 
under slight changes of position. We have occasion to 
carefully plot our surveys. We start more or less acci- 
dentally. We measure our distances more or less arbi- 
trarily. And while what we do is real, it is difficult to 
make it conform in an instructive way to the impressions 
present in other minds. It was in this region of loose 
and slipping terms that the Sophists played their tricks ; 
in this region that the nature of concepts became an 
urgent inquiry, and that the concept was seen to call for 
definition and rectification according to the end in view. 



124 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

In empirical investigation, directed to natural classes, 
we have the stability of comparatively uniform physical 
forces. Though the mind may be much perplexed in a 
fortunate framing of natural concepts, this accomplished, 
it feels that it has in them the material of exact knowl- 
edge. 

There is one more point in this laborious discussion 
which occupied so many centuries, and by which men 
attained a correct analytic expression of the factors of 
knowledge : the relation of the universal to the particu- 
lar. The particular is the product of experience, chiefly 
of the senses ; the universal is the product of the reason 
and the understanding. The one stands for impressions, 
objects, to be combined ; the other stands for this combi- 
nation, this apprehension of the mind. 

All to whom mind, in its insight, seems the ruling ele- 
ment, will give weight to universals ; all to whom matter, 
with its phenomenal presentations and causal relations, 
furnishes the clews of knowledge, will find in particulars 
the laws of being. Plato regarded universals as the eter- 
nal realities, and particulars as their changeable, imper- 
fect expression. Aristotle took one step toward recon- 
ciliation : universals still retained with him their supreme 
importance, but they exist in and with particulars. The 
two are not separable. The nominalist shifted the point 
of view wholly: particulars are the only realities ; univer- 
sals are mere words, aidful to the mind in retaining par- 
ticulars. General relations have no antecedent force over 
particulars, and no existence aside from them ; particu- 
lars give rise to universals as results of their reiterated 
action on the mind. The conceptualist returned deci- 
sively toward realism. He affirms the particulars as reali- 
ties. He also affirms the universal as a distinct product 



UNIVERSALS AND PARTICULARS. 125 

of thought. The two are united in language as the 
expression of knowledge, and in knowledge itself as its 
inseparable terms. The concept is not less real than the 
percept. The percept implies an external object ; the 
concept implies a comprehending power and a distinct 
product of that power. 

In acquiring knowledge, particulars precede generals. 
Particulars alone are mere impressions ; their comprehen- 
sion leads us at once to generals. This, indeed, is com- 
prehension : to know the universal relations which par- 
ticulars sustain to each other. In any act of creation 
universals and particulars are inseparably united with 
each other as thought and language are united in speech. 
The particular is the realization of the universal ; the uni- 
versal is the significancy of the particular. Creation, as 
of the artist, lies in this combination. Creation without 
significancy is not a thing contemplated as possible. 

It is necessary always to distinguish those ideas which 
are primitive insights of reason from those which are the 
results of generalization. In acquiring the one, the 
movement is from the general to the particular. We 
have the notion of space as the condition of any and 
every measurement. The particular gives occasion to 
the general, brings it out more and more distinctly into 
consciousness. Universals are the solvents of knowledge, 
though we find the need of them and learn their uses 
only in connection with particulars. Particulars are the 
objects on which mind expends its powers. 

In classification the movement is in the opposite direc- 
tion. Sensuous qualities are grouped according to their 
relations, and particulars must be completely grasped as 
the condition of success. The one process is allied to the 
expression of thought, when the thought is present to 



126 THEMES OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the mind ; the other to the disclosure of thought to the 
mind, through the medium of the language which con- 
tains it. The mind is the master of neither process, save 
in connection with the other. 

When we see the many and subtile implications of this 
doctrine of concepts, how closely it interlaced itself with j 
all the fundamental inquiries of philosophy, we shall not 
be surprised that men were for so long a time occupied 
with it, nor that they still reach different conclusions 
according to their points of departure. 



^1 
I 



CHAPTER III. 

PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Mediaeval philosophy did not move over a wide 
field. It was characterized by great patience and sub- 
tilty in the discussion of a few questions, but made no 
bold transitions. Our purpose of exposition will be met 
by referring briefly to a few leading men, and by their 
means defining the trend of thought. 

The period is regarded as opening with Johannes 
Scotus Erigena. He belonged to the earlier part of the 
ninth century. He was born in Ireland, but Avent to 
France under the invitation of King Charles. He iden- 
tified philosophy with religion, a position in itself just, 
but at all times difficult of achievement, and in his time 
practically perilous. We have seen that the Christian 
Church maintained its purity by keeping obedience in the 
foreground. The bigotry which later characterized it in 
doctrine was the fruit of an instinct of self-preservation. 
In religion, as in science, if speculation is unrestrained, 
running before inquiry, the chances are it will speedily 
issue in error. Yet it remains forever true that theory 
and fact, the principles which should rule conduct and 
conduct itself, philosophy and religion, must perfectly 
coalesce. 

The philosophy which John Scotus brought to Chris- 
tian dogma was that of Plato and Neo-Platonism. He 



128 PERSONS IN MEDT^.VAL PHILOSOPHY. 

accepted the antecedent existence of Ideas, and made the 
creative process a passage from the more general to the 
less general. From God, the supreme essence, the all-in- 
clusive idea, proceed classes, and, later, sub-classes in the 
order of their generality. This evolution of ideas gives 
us the exact counterpart of empirical evolution. It can 
only be maintained in the mind by abstract terms and > 
logical relations constantly passing into darkness and 
mysticism. The insistency of purely logical dependen- 
cies in his conception of the world led Scotus to affirm 
that all things return into God ; and to give a pantheistic 
form to faith. While the mind can proceed from uni- 
versals to particulars, it can also return from particulars 
to universals. The first universal thus remains the all- 
comprehending term. 

A conception of the universe is pantheistic in the 
degree in which the parts are merged in the whole, and 
each change, as a transient expression, is taken up in one 
comprehensive process. Distinctions thus cease to be 
permanent ; positions are drawn back into the primal 
centre. Whatever we affirm of specific stages and rela- 
tions in this "movement of evolution is lost again in a 
wider view of the whole. We are dealing with a mael- 
strom, whose waters revolve in concentric circles, forever 
sink within themselves, and rise on their own circum- 
ference. The one thing expressed by them, at every 
stage of movement, Is an all-absorbing and controlling 
energy. Conceptions of this sort can only be sustained 
by a philosophical imagination, and receive a tenuous 
expansion from a logical Impulse that acts from within, 
unguided and uncorrected by experience. The person- 
ality of God, as a distinct form of being, thus disappears, 
and the material and the immaterial, the process and the 



ROSCELLINUS. 1 29 

interpreting idea, blend in one movement, which merely 
stands for itself, neither less nor more. All is God, and 
God is all. God no more expounds the all than the all 
expounds God. Indeed, exposition between such shift- 
ing terms lapses, like the last stages of a dream, into a 
bare sense of motion, sinking into unreality. 

Nothing is more illusory than a philosophy which is 
hovering, like eddying mist, over this abyss of pantheism. 
It will affirm almost anything you wish under familiar 
terms of experience, but there is in its affluent affirma- 
tions neither significance nor substance. Its conceptions 
are those of a dream, which have among themselves a cer- 
tain coherence, but disappear never to return. On, ever 
on, till swallowed up in nothingness, is the law of their 
being. The pantheistic philosopher has gone to sleep, so 
far as sensible realities are concerned. He knows nothing 
of them save as furnishing the intangible shadows of his 
multitudinous fancies. It is only facts, with their firm 
outline, that can hold and occupy a waking world. This 
dream of pantheism has often been dreamt, but chiefly by 
minds whose inner processes are so unvarying that they 
soon become enclosed, like a chrysalis, in their own web. 

§ 2. Roscellinus, of France, belonged to the last part of 
the eleventh century. He is identified with nominalism, 
to which he gave, if not the first, the earliest influential 
expression. This doctrine assigns him his position in the 
philosophical world. He illustrates the varied signifi- 
cance of the belief in its dogmatic relations. As only 
individuals exist, he found himself shut up to one God or 
three gods. The acceptance of the last branch of the 
alternative brought upon him ecclesiastical discipline. 
Nominalism did not stand in ready sympathy with the 
creeds of the Church, and made its adherents obnoxious 



I30 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

to the theologians of the time. This fact helped to 
repress it. Such beliefs as the headship of Adam and 
original sin easily unite with realism. Individuality and 
individual responsibility affiliate with nominalism. As 
long, therefore, as the corporate feeling was uppermost, 
realism found in it a strong ally. Earlier discussions are 
often only a more remote and obscure handling of the 
truths which reappear later under nearer and more exact 
forms. The force of hereditary influences in contrast 
with personal powers is the phase of thought under 
which the conflict offers itself in our time. Many a sci- 
entist who owes his point of view to nominalism is yet 
contending in heredity for relations closely associated 
with realism. 

Anselm (1033), first of France, and later Archbishop of 
Canterbury, was a strong, bold figure in theology. He is 
especially associated with the a priori proof of the being 
of God, and with a rigid exposition of the doctrine of the 
atonement. Both of these beliefs have shown more per- 
sistency than their merits are able to explain. The a pri- 
ori argument struggled in vain to identify an ideal with 
an actual dependence ; to make our conceptions the 
measure of the facts. The exposition strove, in a some- 
what similar spirit, to cover our wide and deep spiritual 
dependences on God by the very narrow ones which 
express our relations to justice under civil law. An 
explanation so inadequate would hardly have held its 
ground so long had it not, while misrepresenting, also 
magnified, the divine attributes of grace and justice, and 
chimed in with our narrow thoughts concerning them. 
His temper, which was the theological temper of his time, 
is expressed in his motto, Credo ut intelligam. This 
spirit, if we look at it wisely in reference to that it im-^ 



% 

m 



ABELARD. I3I 

plied in those who entertained it, and to the predominant 
demand of the period, was a noble one. When vision is 
not clear enough nor universal enough to maintain belief 
in its conflict, not so much with unbelief as with gross 
appetite and passion, it must be aided by authority 
expressing itself as dogmatism. Assertion takes the 
place of proof when what is needed is impression and not 
conviction. Dogmatism, as a phase of thought, inter- 
venes between superstition and liberality, between sensu- 
ous domination and intellectual government. Dogmatism 
suppresses disobedience, and is, in turn, set aside by insight. 
The motto of Anselm gave occasion to that of Abelard 
(1079), I^t^lligo ttt credam. This reaction was on the 
higher side of apprehension, and so prepared the way 
for progress. It was not against belief, but against that 
authority which obscures the true grounds of belief by 
checking sincere inquiry. The two mottoes are pro- 
foundly significant. In the order of intelligence, in a 
well-sustained movement of thought, the motto of Abe- 
lard has the precedence. Belief must rest on apprehen- 
sion. In the order of historic development — the order 
which adapts itself to popular ignorance — the motto of 
Anselm expresses the more constant and familiar facts. 
Understanding follows slowly and hesitatingly on belief 
— a belief conventional and hereditary in its prevailing 
forms. Even the transfer of a sound rational faith along 
these darkened ways of life takes place largely by physi- 
cal and social contact, and only breaks out into light, 
here and there, in an experience already profoundly ruled 
by it. It is this practical relation of things in a lower 
region than that of pure thought that has helped to jus- 
tify, to such men as Anselm, the motto, '^ I believe in 
order that I may understand." Moreover, this principle 



132 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

recognizes a fact in the highest realm of intelligence, not 
sufficiently covered by the maxim of Abelard. Belief, by 
means of the experience to which it gives occasion, con- 
stantly reflects light. It makes answer within itself, like 
pure water, to the heavens over it. What we are ever 
needing, as the key with which to unlock divine grace, is 
more grace among men. Only thus do the manifold reac- 
tions of goodness begin to disclose themselves. Yet the 
principle of Abelard expresses the ruling order of sound 
criticism, and will be the prevailing method of spiritual- 
ized intelligence. The starting-points of activity are con- 
scious, approved to the mind in their own light. The 
triangulation is from star to star, from summit to sum- 
mit, in the otherwise void spaces. 

Abelard had been a pupil of Roscellinus, and we 
see in the fact an indication of the clearness, sometimes 
shallowness, of thought which have been associated with 
nominalism. It eschews all mysticism. It brings truth, 
if possible, to a distinct, even if it be an inadequate, 
statement. Realism, on the other hand, leaves its pro- 
foundest terms unexplained. It easily becomes mystical, 
and allows feeling to take the place of comprehension. 
Its thought-processes lack definition. Like slow evapo- 
ration in an atmosphere already saturated, they deepen 
the general obscurity. 

Abelard very naturally inclined to the authority of 
Aristotle in his greater clearness of conclusions. In his 
ethical theory he traced transgression to the relation of 
one's actions to his own conception of right. He did not 
allow virtue or vice to sink below consciousness, and to 
be lost in those obscure conditions of behavior which 
make up the subterranean streams of heredity or disclose 
themselves in conventional forms. A man achieves char- 



ARABIC PHILOSOPHY. I33 

acter, as a navigator achieves success, by the manner in 
which he contends with undercurrents and adverse winds. 
Abelard, in his free dialectics, did not escape the charge 
of heresy. He taught with great brilHancy at Paris, and 
in various portions of France. The positive mind has 
influence, but the clear, bold, positive mind sweeps all 
before it. Men yield to a push in the dark, but they run 
delightedly with an impulse toward the light. 

§ 3. From the time of Abelard the scholastic philoso- 
phy began to feel the influence of Greek philosophy as 
transmitted through Jewish and Arabic channels. This 
reintroduction led to a more extended inquiry into Greek 
literature and to a ready reception of the Greek culture 
of the East. Aristotle was especially influential with the 
Arabs. Their interest in physics predisposed them to 
sympathy with him, and his logic attained that com- 
manding' influence to which it was entitled. The strict 
monotheism of the Mohammedan faith put it out of touch 
with the emanations of Neo-Platonism. 

Averroes (11 26), of Spain, was a leading representative 
of Aristotelian philosophy as developed in connection 
with Islamism. He was a reverent admirer of Aristotle 
and a diligent commentator on his works. He awakened 
fresh and extended interest in them. He was at first 
held in much esteem by the Moors. Later he fell under 
suspicion by his free methods, and Greek philosophy was 
prohibited as inconsistent with simple faith in the Koran. 

The Jews stood, by an oriental habit of thought and 
from their connection with the school of Philo at Alex- 
andria, in more direct sympathy with Neo-Platonism. 
While this led to an exaltation of the conception of 
Jehovah, it readily admitted intermediate angels. The 
chief influence of Jewish authors on scholasticism arose 



134 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

from the translation of Arabic works into Latin. The 
Jews in Spain gave asylum to the rejected philosophy of 
the Arabian Aristotelians, and entered on the work of 
reconciling Jewish theology with Aristotle. The later 
forms of scholasticism were determined by this revival of 
Greek philosophy, and by the conflict of opinion incident 
to it between the influence of Plato and of Aristotle. 

Alexander Hales, who belonged to the earlier portion 
of the thirteenth century, is said to have been the first 
scholastic who was thoroughly acquainted with the works 
of Aristotle. The prevalence of Aristotelian philosophy 
and its victory over Platonism in the Neo-Platonic form 
were advantageous to theology. It helped to hold it 
fast to a simple, distinct affirmation of the Divine Being, 
and turned its attention, in proof of that Being, to the 
physical world. It prevented a mystical development of 
the doctrine of the Trinity into a series of emanations, 
and held it in check as a single mysterious dogma whose 
authority rested on revelation. It also served to arrest 
a tendency to pantheism, and to keep the processes of 
thought in clear, intellectual light. The ideas of Plato, 
on the other hand, easily lent themselves to barren forms 
of fanciful, mystical development. Hales was termed, by 
his disciples, Doctor Irrefragabilis. 

Albertus Magnus (1193), Doctor Universalis, taught at 
Paris and Cologne. He reproduced the entire philosophy 
of Aristotle, with many comments of Arabic masters. 
He was somewhat open to Neo-Platonic influence, and 
combined, in his doctrine of generals, all three symbols. 
The universal exists in the mind of God {ante rem) ; also 
in the particular {in re) ; and later, as a concept {post 
rem). This view approaches conceptualism. Its conces- 
sion to Platonism is formal rather than real, while a care- 



THOMAS AQUINAS. 1 35 

ful analysis of the second and third statements leads to 
their union by accepting the general as a mental product. 
We are compelled to choose between a percept and a 
concept. The general cannot well be both. If it exists 
as a reality in the particular, it should establish itself 
directly or indirectly to the senses. If it does not, it can 
only be a concept. Albertus reserved the doctrine of the 
Trinity from the field of philosophy, and thus helped to 
initiate an effort, so often made, to establish, within the 
field of thought, a sacred enclosure denied to the rela- 
tively profane processes of speculation. Theology, once 
possessed of this retreat from the exacting claims of 
inquiry, finds it very convenient to enlarge and defend it. 
He taught, in opposition to Aristotle, the creation of the 
world. He laid the foundations of a sound ethical theory 
in the freedom of man. 

§ 4. Thomas Aquinas (1225), Doctor Angelicus, was a 
leader in scholastic philosophy. He was an Italian, and 
taught in the chief schools of Italy and France — at 
Bologna, Naples, Cologne, Paris. He was a pupil of 
Albertus, and held the same opinion in reference to gen- 
erals. The moving impulse was agreement with Aristotle, 
and the rejection of generals as antecedent realities. 
This concession, however, to conceptualism was soon to 
eat out the Aristotelian essence. The being of God, he 
held, is declared by the world about us. The order of 
the world involves it. The chain of causes demands it. 
God is pure spirit. The world has been created, but the 
proof of the assertion rests on revelation. The soul is 
immortal by virtue of its own spiritual nature. He held, 
in common with Albertus and against the disciples of 
Aristotle, that the mind is spiritual throughout. Its sen- 
sitive and appetitive powers belong to its very substance, 



136 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

though they can be exercised only in connection with 
material organs. The mind has no innate ideas. Its 
knowledge is derived by abstraction from sensuous im- 
pressions. The inner mechanism of the mind admits of 
no liberty, action being determined by apprehension. 
Liberty refers only to the absence of external restraint. 
He reserved the cardinal doctrines of the Church from 
discussion, as above reason, not contrary to it. They 
appeal to faith. 

Thomas Aquinas gave very complete expression to the 
dominant tendency in scholasticism. The Thomists, by 
the influence of their master and by the concurrence of 
their system with ruling tendencies, became the leaders 
of orthodoxy. The questions broached remain, many of 
them, the subjects of an active diversity of opinion, 
while others of them have passed into the background. 
These topics have not been so much settled as displaced 
by more historic and restricted forms of investigation. 
The mind returns to them only as it can throw some new 
light upon them by considerations more within the range 
of our knowledge. 

The ideas of Plato, as real entities, formed refractory 
terms of order in any hierarchy save one of logical rela- 
tions. The doctrine pushed, therefore, steadily toward 
idealism, the substitution of intellectual for physical con- 
nections. There was also in this belief a strong current 
toward pantheism. The most comprehensive idea, as the 
most comprehensive class, embraces all other ideas, and 
finds its expression in them. The many and the one are 
different aspects of the same movement. Th,e dispersion 
of all these essences and the acceptance of a pure creative 
spirit was a far simpler faith. The philosophy of Aristotle 
was much nearer to Christianity than that of Plato. 



THOMAS AQUINAS. 1 3/ 

In another direction the remnant of realism which 
Aristotle retained wrought mischief, and was rejected by 
Aquinas. The general, existing in the particular, becomes 
its very substance. The two are inseparable from each 
other. The general is as dependent on the particular for 
immediate expression as the particular is on the general 
for inherent character. It becomes, under this doctrine, 
far more difficult, in connection with man, to assert pure 
spirit, individual being. So much, also, was ascribed to 
the life, and the life was so inseparable from its physical 
forms, that the spirit was but a maimed thing, an ab- 
straction, aside from its union with the life in the body. 
This conception interfered with the integrity of the 
spirit, subjected it unduly to physical conditions, and 
perplexed the doctrine of immortality. In behalf of the 
fulness of intellectual being, — the divine mind within us 
— Aquinas affirmed that sensuous and appetitive impres- 
sions are sensibilities of the one spiritual being, though 
owing their instruments in use to the body. The division 
of Aristotle, therefore, between the soul and the spirit, 
the sensibilities of the body and the insights of the mind, 
was greatly softened. The higher life holds, in its own 
unity, all the terms of conscious being. Spiritual being 
and physical being are thus asserted in their simplest 
and most distinct forms. Another tertium quid^ with its 
double riddles, is escaped. Life, as a plastic power, is 
always allied with the spiritual world, whether operative 
below consciousness or through consciousness, or under 
the forms of intelligence. It is not, in this higher union, 
a separate factor, adding its own powers to those of the 
mind. The conscious activity is spiritual through and 
through — an harmonious union of diverse powers in one 
being. Life, separate from intelligence, is a spiritual 



138 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

activity ; but life, united to Intelligence, does not divide 
with it the conscious facts of mind. The unity of spiritual 
action involves the unity of spiritual being. Our spiritual 
life is not a conglomerate. The lower is fused Into the 
higher; the higher goes out through the lower. The life 
is not to be anatomized out from the physical powers 
with which it is united, nor the activity of the mind from 
the activity of the life in which it lives. Our mental 
analysis implies no mechanical division. The spirit Is not 
a remainder, physical powers being first removed and vital 
forces later. The integrity of intelligence is In no way lost 
by its dependences on the body. These dependences are 
simply the existing conditions of its activity. Things as 
diverse as mind and matter do not, in their union, divide 
substance and qualities between them. Magnetism per- 
meates iron and modifies its action without occasioning 
an aggregate of two sets of qualities. The spiritual world 
is not additive in Its structure ; it is, In the highest sense, 
organic. The world holds two factors forever diverse 
from each other, forever acting on each other, forever 
owing their significance to each other, matter and mind. 
Like thought and language, they are Inseparable In all 
practical uses, yet, like thought and language, they owe 
the form of their union to their Intellectual separability. 
Thought and language, as united in speech, are not the 
union of things with different properties, but belonging 
to the same category of being, and dividing the product 
between them ; they are forms of being so diverse as to 
coexist neither by inclusion nor exclusion, but by a reci- 
procity of relations so simple and absolute as to compose 
a higher unity, capable of comprehension but not of divis- 
ion. Immortality Involves a unity of the spirit within 
Itself, like that of truth ; and diverse expressions for it 



THOMAS AQUINAS. 1 39 

through physical energies, like the various utterances of 
truth. It denies the identity of inner and outer terms, 
and also the unchangeability of their conditions of union. 
It affirms the eternal m.arvel of all spiritual life, its grow- 
ing mastery of expression. 

In these conclusions, to which the denial of Aquinas 
helps to lead us, a limit is set to analysis. It is in no case 
equivalent to separation. The emphasis forever rests 
with that which is highest. The lower does not win 
control over the higher by assigning it conditions. Or- 
ganic force, spiritual unity, mean the submission of that 
which is beneath to that which is abov'e, the penetration 
of constructive energy downward to the very bottom of 
things, the virtual subsumption of things into the con- 
structive energies which make use of them. All this 
makes for, and ultimately means, the spiritual unity of 
the universe. The division does not lie between things 
eternally distinct, but eternally one. 

The discussion of innate ideas reached the light in 
Aquinas. It, too, is to be understood in connection with 
Plato. The form which it bears with us is only remotely 
allied to that under which it offered itself to the scholas- 
tics. A denial of innate ideas came with a denial of 
metempsychosis, the eternal shifting of life from form to 
form with the partial retention of its impressions. The 
Christian Church, with its doctrine of the creation of the 
spirit, of salvation by faith, and of future rewards, found 
no point of union with this eternal flow of living things 
through all the imaginary phases assigned them by Plato, 
save only in the moral element which controlled the 
results. The general forms of knowledge which rise more 
and more distinctly in the mind in the progress of inquiry, 
were, with Plato, the traces of a previous life, the innate 



140 PERSONS IN MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas which indicate our relation backward to a prior ex- 
perience. The woody tissue of thought remained, though 
its succulent material had disappeared. A denial of a 
previous life carried naturally with it a denial of innate 
ideas, and led to the reference of all generalizations to 
those powers of abstraction which yield so large a share 
of them. 

Later philosophy, by denying the possibility of a 
successful analysis of all our ideas into terms of experi- 
ence, launched us on that large theme, What portion of 
our knowledge is involved in the sensuous terms of life, 
and how is our knowledge evolved from these terms? 
His defensive attitude against Platonism naturally carried 
Aquinas farther over toward empiricism than the general 
tenor of his belief called for. He was asserting the sen- 
suous, not as against the rational, but as against the blind 
trailing of truth doAvn the endless seons. He was afifirm- 
ing the present as a fresh and self-sufficing phase of 
experience. The question into which this debate has 
now passed by laborious transfer is the measure of prim- 
itive, rational insight which belongs to the mind as its 
own initiative in all knowledge. How far is what we 
term knowledge an acquisition, and how far a deposi- 
tion ? The empiricism of to-day, with its traces of hered- 
itary tendencies, is nearer Platonism, with its innate 
ideas, than is intuitionalism. 

One other profound inquiry, still pursued in the deep- 
sea dredging of philosophy, one of much variety of 
method and diversity of result, was pushed to the front in 
the theology of Aquinas, the freedom of the will. The free- 
dom of the will, in ethical and theological discussion, is a 
primary consideration. Conduct turns on laws freely ac- 
cepted, on the control which man has over his processes 



FREEDOM. 141 

of thought, and his feelings and actions under them. The 
divine character and government can only be understood 
in connection with the character of man. A tendency to 
conceive the divine will, primarily under the close-knit 
connections of things, is accompanied with a tendency to 
reduce the power of man in obedience, and to subject him 
to the conditions by which he is enveloped. He is made 
to feel the fatalistic flow of events in their full force. He 
floats on a stream he can in no way control. In propor- 
tion as the power of God is spiritually conceived, and his 
own freedom becomes the freedom of the largest reason, 
tempered throughout by the largest grace, man is taken 
into the same supreme realm of ideas, and begins to 
move freely under its spontaneous impulses. A rigidity 
in the divine decrees, a pressure in the supreme will, 
bring corresponding abjectness to the human subject. 
While God is thus honored with an absolute authority, 
that authority becomes imperious, and contracts all the 
taint of evil in the world. When the freedom of thought, 
the self-contained movement of reason, prevail in the 
highest realm, they draw all intelligence to themselves, 
with an increasing participation of powers. ^lan becomes 
more and more perfectly united to God, identified with 
him. 

Freedom belongs, first, to the intellect. Its law is the 
law of truth, a law in no way to be resolved into that of 
causation, but one that implies a free response to inner 
insight. Under a constitution determined in its tenden- 
cies, in part by its physical terms, in part by the appeal 
of circumstances, in part by the trend of intellectual 
development, in part by the present force of thought, in 
part by previous thought, certain feelings accompany, as 
persuasives, all prior presentation to the mind of the con- 



142 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ditions of action. These feelings are neither immediately 
subject to the processes of thought, nor independent of 
them. Emotional tendencies are present in each instance, 
but they are not absolute nor final. Emotions are the 
intermediate terms between thoughts and actions, which 
give momentum and stability to effort. They are shifted, 
but shifted slowly, as the result of development within 
the mind itself. The liberty of thought tells upon them, 
but not in an instant. They lie as a balance wheel 
between the quick responsiveness of mind and the uni- 
formities of conduct in which it is to be expressed. 

Action, the third stage of liberty, involving what we 
term the freedom of the will, is not dependent on existing 
feelings under causal relations. The pervasive presence 
of rational insight prevents this. The feelings cannot 
hold their own under the play of thought, any more than 
clouds can retain their color and form in a blaze of sun- 
light. The process is not, first, thought, then feeling, then 
action, the last following as an inevitable sequence ; it 
is, rather, thought, feeling, action, omnipresent with each 
other, in the most complex and shifting relations. Insight 
accompanies the formation of feeling, and equally the 
concessions we make to it in action. Feelings never pass 
as motives into dead weights, carrying on their face a fixed 
registration of force. They fluctuate every instant under 
the clear eye of reason, and take on new relations to con- 
duct. Thus various terms, as pleasure, pain, sense of 
righteousness, sense of wrong, are altogether incommen- 
surable with each other. There is no fixed adjustment 
among themselves by which they can regulate action. 
The spirit must choose between them. This relation is 
of its own order, as much so as the relation of conclu- 
sions to premises in proof. The one is the law of virtue, 



AQUINAS. 143 

the other the law of truth. No analogies of the physical 
world, no connections of causation, can act otherwise 
than to confuse the subject. As a simple and primary 
fact it must be accepted in itself. The necessitarian over- 
looks the infinite mobility of feeling each moment, and 
the impossibility of its holding its ground under the vig- 
orous assaults of reason. 

Reason, personality, defines its path by its own inner 
light. Though it walks obscurely and hesitatingly 
oftentimes, oftentimes gropes its way along or misses it 
altogether, the essential nature of its own life is not 
thereby altered. It is one of insight, with the feelings 
and actions incident thereto. This citadel of thought is 
also the citadel of personal power. The truth makes us 
free indeed. It defines all paths before us. 

There are not in this liberty the same peace, the same 
precision, when it awakens in the soul of man as when it 
flows in resistless restfulness from the mind of God ; yet 
it never lapses into a blind sequence of causes. The 
eternal antithesis of the universe lies between these two 
terms. The entire equilibrium of life is in the adjustment 
and readjustment of these relations. Let the one or the 
other predominate, and we lose either the order of things 
or the significancy of that order. Freedom is not com- 
plete in the human spirit, but it permeates it every- 
where. Its consummation is fulness of life, an absolute 
reign of reason, in which light and color, revelation and 
feeling, are- inseparable parts of each other. 

Aquinas regarded the connections between given con- 
ditions of mind and subsequent actions as necessary. 
The will follows the understanding. He thought we 
might bring forward new considerations, and so modify 
action. This view implies a mechanical and impossible 



144 PERSONS IN MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

separation of states of mind from each other. Liberty 
permeates mental action through and through. The 
unity of the spirit is supreme. There are no given states 
in the living spirit, in the sense of fixed terms. The spirit 
is forever fluent ; its laws are laws of motion. If there 
were once one determinate state, all subsequent states 
would follow from it, and the lapse of liberty would be 
absolute. Whatever may be the phenomena of mind at 
any one moment, the mind remains in and with them, an 
unmeasured and immeasurable term. These phenomena 
do not, as causes, contain the sequences which follow. 
The mind contains both the phenomena and their se- 
quences. The recurrence of like experiences in mind is 
not the sweeping round of causes to the same point in a 
circuit, so that from that moment events go on to repeat 
themselves. The one incommensurable and living pres- 
ence in all spiritual phenomena is the spirit itself. Phe- 
nomena of mind do not become so many objective facts, 
which at once react on the mind for its final subjugation. 
The truths we attain always lead to greater truths ; the 
actions we wisely perform give scope to wider action. 
Having allowed the mind, just ready to pass into action, 
to sink into necessity, we cannot restore it to liberty by 
regression, by taking on a new stage of thought. This 
regression is itself a phase of action, and must be deter- 
mined either freely or by the phenomena which enclose 
it. If one state is final, all states are final. Having sunk 
into a finality, we cannot restore ourselves to freedom by 
retrogression. We must find liberty everj^where, in all 
its pervasive power, or we can find it nowhere. It is like 
Deity, in whose nature it is ultimately enclosed ; it must 
be grasped in its omnipresence 

It is, indeed, true that action tends to follow the under- 



DUNS SCOTUS. 145 

standing, and, in the ultimate harmony of being, will 
coalesce with it. Conduct will either be raised to the 
level of thought, or thought will sink to the plane of con- 
duct. Understanding itself arises in the use of liberty, 
and brings powerful persuasives to it. But if liberty fol- 
lowed obediently in the footsteps of truth, there would 
be no conflict in the human spirit. The one great spirit- 
ual fact of life, the want of harmony within the mind 
itself, the failure of our powers to act concurrently, is 
overlooked by this assertion. The fluctuations of human 
life betray a law waiting determinate expression. 

Aquinas gave his sanction to a view often repeated in 
subsequent years, that the doctrines of faith, as beyond 
the range of human reason, were to be sheltered from 
speculation. This is an opinion which empiricism, with 
any tincture of belief, the more readily accepts, because 
it at once becomes painfully obvious that a simple inter- 
pretation of the sensuous terms of experience can bring 
very little support to faith. Philosophy has also often 
found this view practically convenient, as helping to shel- 
ter it from the opprobrium attendant on unbelief. Hav- 
ing established a preserve for religious dogmas, as for the 
clean animals of the altar, it is the more at liberty to push 
the hunt in all other places. Yet, to one resting his 
proofs on reason, there is no region in which sobriety of 
thought is more urgent than in religious faith. 

§ 5. Johannes Duns Scotus, the Subtile Doctor, of Eng- 
lish origin, was, in the earlier portion of the fourteenth 
century, the distinguished critic of the doctrines of 
Aquinas in the schools of Oxford, Paris, and Cologne. 
He still farther extended the beliefs which must be made 
to rest on revelation, and united destructive criticism 
to implicit faith. The critical mind often loves to take 
10 



146 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

refuge from its own processes in dogmatic assertion: 
Scotus, in common with Aquinas, accepted universals as 
existing before, in, and after particulars. Leaning, how- 
ever, toward Plato, he laid strong emphasis on the gen- 
eral as distinct in existence from the particular, with 
which it is united. In the reality of the general he found 
the reality of knowledge. Since all knowledge pertains 
to the general, knowledge, he thought, would become 
unreal and visionary if reality did not belong to the gen- 
eral. Herein he attached superior weight to physical, as 
contrasted with intellectual, existence. The reality of 
knowledge lies in the justness of the mind's action, its 
universality in the fact that it is derived by all men in 
common from one set of symbols. 

The notion of matter, as a kind of stuff involved in all 
creative processes, clings strongly to most minds. Matter 
is always indispensable material to man in every physi- 
cally constructive process. Hence he comes to assume 
this as a universal relation in his thoughts. Scotus 
regarded matter, in itself of very different degrees of sub- 
tilty, as associated with all forms of being save that of 
God. He alone is pure spirit. Matter stood with him in 
three relations: as unformed material, as material shaped 
to the uses of living things, and as material in the hand 
of man for voluntary construction. We are indebted to 
a more penetrating inquiry into the primitive properties 
of matter for the power to see that the most direct and 
simple forms of activity carry with them both material 
and construction. There is no separation between them. 
Matter is throughout orderly activity, nothing more. 
There is no passive, receptive substratum. Receptive 
processes in the physical world are as definite as active 
processes, and of the same nature with them. The dis- 



DUNS SCOTUS. 147 

tinction Is a superficial one, turning chiefly on phe- 
nomena of motion. The object that is struck is not in 
its reactions different from the object that gives the 
blow. 

Scotus believed in the freedom of the will, but greatly 
reduced the value of the doctrine by the arbitrary* form 
under which he conceived the will. The will, not the 
understanding, is the determining power. What God 
wills is right. Right follows after volition. Scotus and 
Aquinas stood on opposed positions, which need to be 
merged in the unity of a free spirit ; free in all its activity, 
but kindling the light for its pathway always in the rea- 
son. It is the very light of the reason, itself a voluntary 
power, that enables it to see and propose to itself diverse 
methods of action. The right lies in the searching vision 
of reason. Liberty is not arbitrary, — so far as it is so it is 
losing guidance — it is the power of the mind to see and 
assign itself laws, and to pursue them. Failing in this, it 
loses counsel, loses choice, loses liberty. If the deriva- 
tion of the word dunce from Duns is correct, — the disci- 
ples of Scotus being called Dunces — the subtilty of the 
Subtile Doctor, employed in too narrow a field, would 
seem to have issued shortly in sterility. 

It is far better, with Aquinas, to conceive the centre of 
personality and of conduct to lie in the reason, even if 
the reason does not seem to us to include liberty, than it 
is, with Scotus, to lodge it in will, if will stands for arbi- 
trary power. A God who moves rationally in the realm 
of nature and of grace better calls out our love and feeds 
our life than one who moves irrepressibly. A liberty, so- 
called, in God which overrides our own libertv is a loss 
rather than a gain to us. Liberty above and liberty be- 
low can coalesce alone in reason. It was a great merit 



148 PERSONS IN MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in Aquinas that he gave such weight to reason in action, 
in nature, and in grace. 

Freedom in its highest form Hes in the relation of 
reason to action. It is a conscious union of the two. 
Though a logical process is an unflinching movement, it 
is one of insight and not of coercion, one centred in the 
mind and not out of it, one of reason and not of force. 
The complete development of the truth and the perfect 
transfer of it to conduct are that very play of our rational 
life within itself which we term freedom. This activity, 
even though it be united to the omnipotence of God, 
allows the unconstrained inclusion within itself of all 
effort like unto its own. 

§ 6. William of Occam belonged to the earlier part 
of the fourteenth century. He brought forward the doc- 
trine of conceptualism, which offers an exact and final 
analysis of the relation of generals, holding the mental 
and physical terms in even balance. As this balance, 
however, had been lost for long by the prevalence of 
realism, conceptualism arose in opposition to it, under 
the shadow of nominalism. It thus tended, at first, to 
an undue assertion of particulars, and so of the sensu- 
ous terms of knowledge. It opened the way to that 
pursuit of physical inquiries which was soon to follow, 
and to renew the fertility of thought. The extreme ten- 
dency of the doctrine, as urged by Occam, is seen in the 
fact that he" regarded all theological dogmas as matters of 
faith and not of reason. When one turns from specula- 
tions which have become futile by their remoteness from 
experience to an Inquiry into things, the first fruits of 
this investigation seem so distinct as to stand out of 
all connection with the abandoned themes of thought. 
These are either pushed aside entirely, or locked up, as 



I 



OCCAM. 149 

disused furniture of the mind, under the key of faith. Not 
till physical relations begin to cover the whole field, to 
unite themselves to one another, and to social and ethical 
facts, do they rise to, and begin to raise again, the old 
questions of belief, and to furnish material for a more 
rational answer to them. Simple, physical inquiry starts 
at the point most remote from spiritual centres, and much 
time is necessarily consumed in reaching them again. 
The doctrines of faith are the last, the largest, the most 
comprehensive terms of reason. We see this, in our own 
time, in the far more tolerant attitude which empiricism 
is taking toward religion. 

§ 7. There was not a very wide range in scholastic 
philosophy. Religion, directly or indirectly, dominated 
it all. It is not necessary to enumerate those who took 
part in it without gaining any representative positions. 
We are defining the river chiefly by its curves. While 
France possessed the leading seats of learning, England 
played an honorable part in the number and ability of 
the leaders in thought whom she furnished. 

This philosophy owed its moderation and strength to 
the practical temper of Christianity. This restrained the 
theologian from wandering away from the earlier and 
simpler expositions of Christian doctrine, and the tra- 
ditions of the Church. To be sure, there was not much 
toleration, not much fredom of thought, but the themes 
and the times had not yet come which demanded them, 
and could make profitable use of them. The realism 
which prevailed in philosophy held a decided element of 
mysticism. This had developed itself in Neo-Platonism 
as the doctrine of ecstasy, the ineffable union of man 
with God in higher insight. The Neo-Platonic sentiment 
was not altogether extinguished in the Church by the 



150 PERSONS IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. 

very desirable prevalence of the Aristotelian philosophy. 
It easily affiliated with realism, whose inscrutable entities 
were not readily defined or kept apart in thought. This 
philosophic tendency, united to an earnest Christian 
temper, gave rise, at the close of the scholastic period, 
to mysticism in Germany, in the preaching of the gospel 
and in its practical enforcement. Piety must be exceed- 
ingly wise, exceedingly beneficent, or, wearying of the 
commonplace, plodding duties of life, it nourishes a 
fervor and cherishes a devotion which have in them the 
seeds of mysticism. Mysticism thus easily affiliates with 
the ardor of piety, and becomes its most immediate 
danger. 

Eckhart, a Dominican, belonging to the last part of the 
thirteenth century, was an earnest and very influential 
preacher in Germany. He was thoroughly imbued with 
the conjoint Platonic and Christian spirit. It was the 
supreme duty of men, as he conceived the world, to re- 
unite themselves to God by a higher intuition of him. 
The real steps of growth in the world were thus obscured 
by the urgency of the sentiment that was to animate 
them. The fire that was to warm men became a confla- 
gration and wasted itself in the air. Among the many 
who followed in his methods of thought and of instruc- 
tion was Johann Tauler. 

When the strongest feeling and the clearest apprehen- 
sion touch each other, it is difficult to maintain sobriety 
of thought. Intense light loses its revealing power. We 
do not see by looking at the sun, but by looking with 
it over the wide landscape. Intuition, so-called, lapses 
readily into confusion. The world, in its bald literalism, 
is needed just as much to sober, direct, and unfold feeling 
in a healthy way, as it is to keep thought from those 



MYSTICISM. 151 

visionary flights in which it gathers nothing but weari- 
ness. The intellectual world, though not far astray in its 
philosophy, was waiting for the voice of God in that 
clear, homely fashion in which it is wont to utter itself ; 
and this voice came to it in the next period, directing the 
attention outward to physical things, first apprehended 
sensuously and later spiritually. We may well thank 
scholasticism for the firm way in which it laid down 
and maintained fundamental ideas, and so cut short less 
adequate, more visionary and shifting presentations of 
truth. 



PART III. 

MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. The changes by which scholasticism passed into 
modern philosophy were initiated in the fifteenth century 
and completed in the sixteenth. Modern philosophy 
differs from the philosophy which preceded it by a wider 
range of subjects, by much greater freedom in their con- 
sideration, and by fresh and varied data of inquiry. The 
relation of truth to a given form of faith is no longer 
a supreme matter. Philosophy rests on its own merits, 
and is pursued for its own ends. The disparagement and 
weakness it suffers arise not so much from a dogmatic 
temper as from the greater relative success which has 
attended on physical investigations. 

The questions which it chiefly considers are the sources 
of knowledge, the nature of matter and mind, the mode 
of their union in one system, the manner in which this 
system has been developed, with the social, ethical, and 
religious inquiries incident thereto. Science and phi- 
losophy unite in a careful analysis of the constructive 
agents which take part in the progress of events, and in a 
search for the laws, narrow and broad, which define their 
methods of action. The fortunes of faith are deeply 
involved in these investigations, but less anxiety is now 
felt from this fact, since it is more distinctly seen that 
they are, and ought to be, enclosed in the larger fortunes 



154 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 



4 



of truth. The barrier between things to be believed and 
things to be sought out everywhere gives way. All belief 
is called on to make proof of itself in terms of reason, 
and these terms themselves are at the same time much 
enlarged. 

The new directions given to these discussions in this 
period are preeminently those incident to physical in- 
quiry. The physical world has ceased to be a secondary 
factor, and has at times threatened, not merely to absorb 
the attention of men, but to drink up the living processes 
of thought in its own thirsty sands. The contention for 
the possession of the ultimate throne of power, the throne 
of being, is vigorously pushed between matter and mind ; 
and the conflict can only be settled by an exhaustive 
estimate of the resources of both kingdoms, by a deter- 
mination of the true seats of that order which is so 
widely expressed in matter, and so profoundly appre- 
hended by mind. Does the apprehension precede or 
follow the presentation, becomes the urgent inquiry of 
philosophy ; and this is virtually an extension of the 
question of generals and particulars. While the concept 
arises as the product of generalization in the mind of man, 
is this its ultimate and complete relation ? Do we virtu- 
ally create the meaning we find in things ? Does this 
meaning call in itself for no explanation ? We are pushed 
on to the problem whether thought is a process of phys- 
ical forces acting in consciousness, or whether thought, 
as the truly antecedent, creative energy, makes its rec- 
ord in and through these material agents. 

Clearness will be best attained in the consideration of 
this period by first marking transition causes and persons, 
and by tracing, later, the development of philosophy in 
the leading nations of Europe. 



CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 

§ I. The first occasion of a fresh philosophy was the 
decay which naturally overtook scholasticism. Its dis- 
cussions were subtile, and often far removed from the 
possible correction of any known facts. This tension of 
thought becomes wearisome, even to the few minds capa- 
ble of it, when it is found simply to open the way to 
endless diversities of opinion. The assertions of scholas- 
ticism were also increasingly liable to become merely 
verbal. The mind could not distinctly shape and firmly 
hold conceptions which had nothing in the world of 
experience to define and fasten them. Thus the thinkers 
readily slipped into logomachy. Still more was it difficult 
to make certain that disputants held the same concep- 
tions, and were talking about the same things. Indeed, 
how could they meet in identical ideas, when the things 
under consideration were not empirical facts, but notions 
evolved from their own processes of thought, and so 
liable, in each instance, to be colored by a distinct 
method? But nothing is more fatal to prolonged inquiry 
than the suspicion that it is becoming merely formal, 
and is losing all hold on the world of things. 

Scholasticism was also much constrained by authority. 
It was shut off from themes of the utmost interest to it, 
or bound, in pursuing them, to reach conclusions which 



156 CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 

should lie within the narrow limits of orthodoxy. Phi- 
losophy cannot long prosper under such conditions. It 
soon ceases to be philosophy. Philosophy seeks the 
integrity of interior relations, and must be left, in its 
pursuit, to the creative freedom of thought. We may 
not regret the restraint put upon speculation for the 
moment, by superior practical interests, when we recol- 
lect how little there was to guide or restrain it within 
itself ; but scholasticism, none the less, in losing its lib- 
erty, lost its hold on the minds of men. It was subject, 
therefore, not merely to the decay which falls to every 
system in its passage into a higher one, but found itself 
distinctly superannuated by its narrow range and attenu- 
ated connections. 

A second concurrent and provocative cause of change 
was the revival of classical influence. The modern world 
woke up, almost abruptly, to the marvellous strength and 
beauty of the civilization which had preceded it. This was 
especially true in art. The desolations of war had swept 
away art, and most of its monuments. An artistic sensi- 
bility had been called out a second time, and was in 
vigorous action, when this fresh and powerful appeal 
from the dreamy years of the past came to it. The eff"ect 
was rare in human history. Out of the very sombre and 
very limited records of events with which men were 
familiar, there arose before their astonished vision the 
most perfect, varied, and extended period of art known 
to men. This renaissance affected philosophy more indi- 
rectly than it did most other forms of social activity. 
Scholasticism had, through its lines of descent, estab- 
lished and maintained a connection with the best specu- 
lations of Greek philosophy. It had derived from it most 
that it could confer, and, in its sober handling of the dif- 



DISCOVERY. 157 

ficult themes of discussion, occupied a position in advance 
of that philosophy. The widening of Greek influence, 
therefore, brought directly to scholastic philosophy few 
new data. Its indirect influence was, however, consid- 
erable, and lay in the direction of enlarging the liberty 
of thought. Many minds, overshadowed by the power of 
a previous life, dropped into a cold, crude scepticism of 
truths which had so long been enforced upon them, but 
which they had not deeply received. The Humanists of 
Italy maintained, under these unreconciled incentives 
of the past and the present, a formal belief and a profli- 
gate unbelief, which were true to neither. This license 
of thought, though incapable of any w^orthy production 
within itself, favored that liberty w^hich both empirical 
and speculative inquiry so much needed. 

The European world was also much stimulated, in this 
transition period, by geographical discovery. This en- 
tirely altered the balance of things, and opened up to the 
imagination and to adventure fresh and wonderful fields. 
Though our own time has experienced a more marvellous 
impulse, derived from the discovery and appropriation of 
the powers of nature, the world has not, at any other 
period, been so magnified before the eyes of men as in 
the years which joined the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies. 

Inventions, in themselves as productive of change as 
any that have followed them — gunpowder, printing, pa- 
per — were indicating the enlarged activity on which so- 
ciety was about to enter. Though philosophy was less 
affected by these changes than were most forms of 
thought, it could not fail to be reached and stimulated 
by them. 

Free cities, the fruits of awakened industry and com- 



158 CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 

merce, were becoming the seats of a more generous and 
liberal development. The area of thought and its incen- 
tives were much widened by them. The experiences of 
life were not only greatly brightened over narrow sur- 
faces, a more extended interchange of intellectual influ- 
ances grew up. Philosophy was less confined to the 
lecture-room, less associated with theological instruction, 
and drew more independently the attention of those 
best fitted for it. 

§ 2. This also was the period to which science dates 
back its illustrious record. Since Copernicus, the names 
of those who have given themselves successfully to phys- 
ical inquiry gather rapidly. Philosophy was, from the 
outset, much influenced, as it needs must be, by the em- 
pirical movement. One-half its problems are physical, 
and neither half can be discussed advantageously except 
in connection with a thorough knowledge of the physical 
world. Science has aided philosophy by directing attention 
more explicitly to the facts which calk for explanation, 
by enforcing more exact and sober methods of inquiry, by 
establishing new criteria of success, by leading to dif- 
ferent views of the nature of matter, by giving entirely 
new weight to the slow and orderly development of 
events, and by transferring inquiry from a speculative to 
a historic field. "While science, with an immense balance 
of advantage, has aided philosophy, it has brought to it 
many imme'diate embarrassments. Its great successes 
have not only led to the partial displacement of phi- 
losophy, they have occasioned a feeling of contempt for 
the more obscure and less immediately fruitful form 
of investigation. The excess which always accompanies 
a ruling tendency has shown itself, with even more than 
wonted force. The methods and results of science have 



THE REFORMATION. 1 59 

been regarded as exclusive and final, and the hope has 
been entertained of banishing metaphysics, or of subject- 
ing it, in its small remainder of truth, to physical forms of 
inquiry. The intoxication and bewilderment of success 
have never been shown in more ludicrous or in more 
painful forms than in the extreme doctrines of philosophy 
that have accompanied investigations primarily physical. 
Time is correcting, and will fully correct, these errors of 
precipitancy, and, with vastly increased knowledge of the 
material world, and thereby also of the intellectual world, 
we shall be prepared for their harmony in a universe 
completely comprehensive of them both. 

§ 3. As was inevitable, decided unbelief sprang up in 
this period, and helped, at its own great cost, to break 
the yoke of dogma. Bruno (1548), a Dominican, who 
finally suffered martyrdom at Rome, is a favorable ex- 
ample of an unbelief which is in truth a higher form of 
belief. He caught clearly the new idea of matter which 
was being slowly given by science, asserted the identity 
of matter and inner force, regarded nature as the constant 
product of the Divine Presence, and the universe as the 
unfolding of the Supreme Reason, to the absolute exclu- 
sion of evil as a separate principle. The truths of astron- 
omy, as presented in the beliefs of Bruno, infringed 
violently on the dogmas of the Church, and the Church 
was slow in learning, as it has been in each successive 
contest, that the letter being cheerfully surrendered, the 
spirit, in a freer, purer, more profound and helpful form, 
remains to it. The supreme moral force of the world 
is shown in the fact that, while it is so full of these pitiful 
collisions, each of them strikes out the divine fire. 

§ 4. A last occasion of change in philosophy which 
we mention was the Reformation. This, also, was a very 



l60 CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 

complex fact, and in its speculative bearings freely min- 
gled good and evil. It was a break with authority, and 
yet a very partial one. It was a fresh appeal to the 
minds and consciences of men, but one rapidly withdrawn 
when it began to take effect beyond the limits assigned 
it. Religion, though it raises the most profound ques- 
tions we have occasion to answer, is primarily practical. 
Its popular precepts are of more moment than its specu- 
lative doctrines ; its government of conduct than its 
guidance of thought. Men have not yet entered suffi- 
ciently into the largeness of reason to find it an absolute 
necessity, or to make a wise use of it. They seek safety 
in the shelter of authority, and cling to it as a protection 
against the weariness, erratic tendency, and futility of in- 
quiry. The mind is yet so far short of its manhood that 
it can attain neither with generality nor constancy a 
manly use of its powers. Authority is habitual in relig- 
ious action, partly because the leaders of men recognize 
its necessity, and yet more because they themselves, in 
their most independent efforts, still cling to a higher 
sanction, as they deem it, than that of reason. Few, 
very few, are yet able to see that nothing is lighter than 
light, holier than holiness, or more weighty than the ver- 
dict of truth ; that the mind of God meets the minds of 
men in the brightness of revelation only as they act to- 
gether in insight. Reason, from its own nature, can ac- 
cept no limitations. As the largest and the best, it seeks 
to win all to itself. Reason is no other than the universal 
presence and push of the divine thought in us as in God. 
The authority which the Reformation cast off was, as 
authority, more august and safe than that which it ac- 
cepted. Its gains lay in breaking, at least for a moment, 
with authority, rather than in the new authority which it 



THE REFORMATION. l6l 

set up. A book is less fit to rule men than a universal 
Church ; a creed than a historic movement. A book, 
and especially a book so open to diversity of exposition 
as the Bible, can only win authority through those who 
gather around it, interpret it, and administer it. Hence 
there spring up many divisions — a thing not unfortunate 
in itself — and each division — a thing most unfortunate — 
claims an absolute, an unequivocal right. Thus the au- 
thority of the book is loaned, in a most contradictory 
way, to all who set up in its name an ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment ; while the rationality of the book itself is ob- 
scured by all the glosses which the most partial and inade- 
quate interpretation puts upon it. Thus we have that 
very unfortunate rule in which the king is unapproachable, 
and his ministers affix his seal to their own rescripts. 
The actual thing and the formal thing are not the same. 
The authority urged on the consciences of men is the 
Word of God ; the pressure actually felt in their thoughts 
is some specific rendering of truth which owes its value 
to the modicum of reason that may chance to be in it. 
The inner reason of revelation is thus hidden from in- 
quiry, and the unreason of the theologian is put in its 
place. The inadequacy of the entire method is disguised 
from those who take part in it by dividing reason against 
itself, by assenting to and denying its authority in one 
breath. The king is dethroned by his ministers, but con- 
strained, as a last act of sovereignty, to make over his 
government to those Avho have undertaken to assume it. 
No other book, hardly the world itself, searches the hu- 
man mind so diligently, so profoundly, with such varied 
and changing appeals to spiritual insight as the Bible. It 
must, like the world of which it is a spiritual record, abide 
with us individually, for a rendering constantly renewed 
II 



l62 CAUSES OF THE NEW ERA. 

and deepened, or it slowly ceases to be to us a revelation. 
It kindles into light by the constant ignition of reason. 

The universal Church in its historic growth eliminates 
the caprice of individuals ; stands, in part at least, for the 
combined force of events, the evolution of truth under the 
manifold demands of life ; and so, in its unity, perpetuity, 
actuality, may far better represent authority than any sys- 
tem of doctrines freshly rendered in a creed by a single 
sect. But the universal Church, not less than its sacred 
books, fails in its intrinsic weakness and manifold perver- 
sions to disclose the perfect truth. This is, in its infinite 
largeness, the constant pursuit and everlasting reward of 
individual minds. 

The Reformation did much for philosophy by sud- 
denly throwing open to thought fundamental questions. 
Though it took back its own gift, so far as it was able, by 
giving these questions a dogmatic answer. Yet neither 
could the question be asked nor the answer accepted 
without a great increase in the activity and freedom of 
thought. In a given case, men claimed and exercised 
a right which they were not yet willing to proclaim as a 
universal principle. 

Since the Reformation reason has, with growing dis- 
tinctness, asserted its ultimate right, not as against revela- 
tion, but as itself the medium of revelation. What the 
ether is to the light, that is reason to all truth. The 
authority we are to feel and to enforce is the author- 
ity of the only divine word, the word of truth. The Di- 
vine Spirit, in whose presence all revelation culminates, 
is the Spirit of Truth. The early defenders of liberty of 
thought strove to protect themselves from the authority 
of the Church by the authority of the Bible — by asserting 
two forms of truth, that dependent on revelation and 



THE REFORMATION. 163 

that which is the fruit of inquiry. Yet both of these, in 
all the uses of intellectual life, must make answer to 
identically the same powers and the same laws. 

The Reformation did most for the spiritual problems 
of life by helping to renovate life itself, and so giving it 
more adequate data from which to draw its conclusions. 
It is the poverty of virtue within us that chiefly hides its 
power in the world about us. The twilight is so feeble as 
not to be a clear forecast of the coming day. Protestant- 
ism helped life in its practical, popular phases immensely. 
Its many subdivisions served to bring the truth more 
closely to each group of disciples, and enabled it to work 
in them a more personal renovation. It gained in spe- 
cial forms, as in Puritanism, a fresh hold on individuals. 
Though the analysis had not reached its ultimate atoms, 
had not liberated the person, it had broken up the mass 
into many groups, and so prepared the way for the next 
step. Protestantism seems to offer an unfortunate divis- 
ion of sentiment, but when the next stage shall have been 
reached, and the individual have attained his own vital 
force, the conditions will be present for larger, freer, and 
more fortunate combinations than ever before. When 
the primitive atoms are set at liberty, reunions of all 
sorts are open to us. Protestantism remains to be yet 
justified by the intellectual unity and freedom for which 
it is preparing the way. 



CHAPTER II. 

TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

§ I. Sir Francis Bacon (1561), hardly himself a philos- 
opher, influenced very vigorously the change in direction 
of thought in connection with which modern philosophy 
has been developed. This change consisted in diverting 
the attention from metaphysical principles and directing 
it to facts, more particularly to physical facts. In its 
extreme form — and its form has become increasingly ex- 
treme as the result of its own progress — it casts contempt 
on metaphysics, which it identifies with speculative vaga- 
ries, as without value and without verification, and would 
confine inquiry, as it confines knowledge, to the sensuous 
world. 

This transfer, as enforced by Bacon, though extreme in 
temper, stood for a greatly needed change. The theoret- 
ical tendency had so outstripped men's knowledge of the 
world as to have become unfruitful. They were striving 
to reach underlying principles without understanding the 
facts through which they were expressed. The realism 
of Plato was very influential in defining the method of 
investigation. The general contains all knowledge, and 
it exists prior to the particular. The particular is its 
partial and inadequate expression. This belief diverted 
attention from physical inquiries, and turned it to a defi- 
nition of ideas within the mind itself. Aristotle modified 



BACON. 165 

this doctrine by the assertion that the general exists only 
in the particular, and so prepared the way for physical 
investigation. 

The conceptualist went much farther. He directed in- 
quiry to particulars as the only form of substantial being, 
and to concepts as owing their existence and entire value 
to their correspondence with the common qualities found 
in particulars. 

Bacon threw himself heartily into this effort to secure a 
change of base. In this lay his chief influence for good, 
that he gave efficient aid in strengthening a tendency 
whose conditions were ripe. He united to the largest 
intellectual endowments untiring enthusiasm for knowl- 
edge. He regarded all knowledge as his province. Yet 
his own contributions were more theoretical than prac- 
tical, touched the methods of inquiry more than its data. 
His superiority lay in his general oversight of the field, 
rather than in any careful labor in any part of it. He 
was thus as much allied to the scholastic whom he was 
leaving as to the scientist whom he was approaching. 
He never gave in his adhesion to the Copernican theory. 

He strengthened, with all his energy, empirical inquiry, 
and opposed the dogmatism which so easily allies itself 
with speculation. Speculation, divorced from facts, finds 
its tests of truth within the mind itself, and so leads to 
that peremptory assertion which is dogmatism. 

Bacon maintained that religion and science should be 
kept apart. Science, associated with religion, gives rise 
to unbelief, and religion, associated with science, occasions 
extravagance. One is tempted to feel that he, with his 
large insight, accepted this statement in moral indolence, 
as a convenient protection of his own pursuits, and not 
as a clearly defined principle maintained within itself. 



l66 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

Science and religion both need, in mutual correction and 
enlargement, the very influences, each from each, which 
he implies in them. The too ready belief of religion — 
which by reaction in due time cuts down the limits of 
faith — imperatively calls for the clearer vision of science ; 
and science, moving in too exterior and mechanical a way 
among mere phenomena, greatly needs to recognize the 
heat and freedom of spiritual life, in themselves facts of 
a higher order. The life of Bacon is a painful com- 
mentary on the separation which he thus advocated, be- 
tween the outer and the inner circles of conduct and 
conviction. 

Bacon, as opposed to the scholastic method and as en- 
forcing inquiry, urged the necessity of overcoming preju- 
dices. He enumerated these as the images — idola — of 
the tribe, the cave, the forum, and the theatre ; illusions 
which are inwrought in our common methods of thought, 
illusions which belong to us as individuals, illusions which 
arise in connection with language, and illusions which are 
the result of tradition. This thorough and penetrating ex- 
posure of the misleading lights which surround the mind, 
always in order, was at that time urgently needed. 

Bacon insisted on fruit as the only sufficient test of 
sound inquiry. Though his definition of fruit was a lim- 
ited one, this insistency was wholly in the line of prog- 
ress. All real knowledge will give us, in one direction 
or another-, a better mastery of the conditions of life. 
Knowledge lies in the correspondence of our conceptions 
with some permanent subject-matter to which they per- 
tain. The permanence, however, of the object of knowl- 
edge may arise either in connection with physical exist- 
ence or in connection with convictions which are the 
enduring possession of the human mind, evoked in it by 



DESCARTES. 1 6/ 

these physical facts. Bacon failed to recognize, as shown 
by his slight esteem of mathematics and of logic, the full 
value of those mental solvents which the mind brings to 
every discussion. The excessive swing of empiricism was 
felt by him, as by those who came after him. 

§ 2. Descartes (1596), born in Touraine, spent his ear- 
lier life in France and his later life in Netherlands, 
which gave more freedom to speculative inquiry. He 
was eminent in mathematics and physics as well as in 
philosophy, and saw considerable service as a soldier. 
The affiliation of mathematical truth with the acceptance 
of primitive beliefs may be seen in him. He had, as a 
philosopher, to encounter dogmas no longer maintained 
with fresh conviction, the light esteem of religious 
beliefs by men of affairs, and the more determined and 
growing unbelief incident to physical inquiry. He felt, 
therefore, the need, in the defence of truth, of laying 
anew the foundations of knowledge. He wished to test 
the validity of that mass of beliefs which men had come 
to hold under such a variety of obscure and accidental 
causes. He assumed the attitude of universal doubt, not 
that he might attack the defences of faith, but that he 
might see in what new and sufficient way they could be 
defended. Doubt, with him, was simply a preparation 
for wiser and firmer belief. 

He reasoned in this way : This universal doubt re- 
mains with me, as the very substance of the act by which 
I call in question current opinion. It, therefore, cannot 
be involved in doubt, but must be the basis of doubt. 
Hence arose his first conclusion : I think, therefore I am. 
The present fact of doubt removes beyond doubt the 
existence of the mind that entertains it. But the accept- 
ance of myself as a thinking agent carries with it my 



l68 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

other conscious experiences, as those of perception. I 
know these, on their subjective side, precisely as I know 
my distrust. Hence the mind is arrived at as an indubi- 
table fact in its own inner circle of experiences. On no 
other terms can I make anything of unbelief itself. 

But among these mental experiences is a conviction of 
the being of God. This conviction must have an ade- 
quate cause. The mind itself is not a sufficient cause for 
so transcendental an idea. Hence it must be referred to 
God himself, who has awakened it in me. Thus the ex- 
istence of God becomes a second indubitable truth. 

But if God is, then the powers which he has given me 
must be trustworthy in their legitimate lines of action. 
That which they affirm with distinctness they must also 
affirm with correctness. I am, therefore, entitled to a third 
comprehensive assertion, that human knowledge, open to 
progress within itself, is valid. Hence the mind may go 
forth to hopeful inquiry and assured truth. 

The primary assertions of Descartes can hardly be said 
to have been very influential, otherwise than by opening 
wide the door to free thought. There is an odd admixt- 
ure in them of the easy and the difficult, the certain and 
the doubtful. Our primary convictions are so simple and 
so absolute that they are liable to suffer loss and confu- 
sion by any exposition of them. Weaker truths are in- 
troduced into our lengthened statements. 

The lasf of the above assertions, made dependent on 
the other two, is the trustworthiness of our own powers. 
But these same powers have been relied on in the reason- 
ing which establishes them, and must, therefore, have 
been antecedently trusted as a condition of its correct- 
ness. That which is wisely doubted must be proved by 
some test which reaches beyond itself. If we think that 



DESCARTES. 1 69 

one Is deceiving us, we can hardly accept his own state- 
ment that this is not the case. By no possibihty can we 
distrust, with any absolute doubt, our own faculties, and 
afterward, by any process of reasoning, restore our faith 
in them. That faith must first be renewed as the con- 
dition of solidity and safety in all the steps of proof. 
Confidence in our own powers is the eternal postulate of 
all thought. 

Descartes should, therefore, have started where he left 
off, the irrationality of disbelieving the clear and uni- 
form declarations of the human mind. Disbelief at this 
point is absurd and contradictory, since it affirms and 
denies in the same breath the same thing. To disbe- 
lieve is to believe. We cannot deny unless we can also 
affirm, since the difference between negation and affirma- 
tion is formal, not substantial. Reason is transparent 
through and through, and establishes by its own force its 
own convictions. To look beyond itself for its authority 
is to be irrational, since such an action throws the mind 
upon the futile effort of seeking an ultimate and denying 
it when it is offered. It is of the very nature of reason to 
be satisfied with its own insight. This is to be rational. 
The mind is regnant on this condition and this only. It 
reigns by reigning. 

Moreover, the first assertion of Descartes involves the 
last. Cogito ergo sum is not simply a statement of a fact 
of consciousness, but is also a statement of the simplest 
principles involved in it, the principle that phenomena 
imply a seat or source. The affirmation that I am, is thus 
nothing other than the affirmation of the correctness of 
the action of those mental powers by which I affirm it. 
This is the sole significancy of the statement. Without 
this force, the assertion becomes a mere phenomenon 



^ 



170 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

among other phenomena. Mathematical reasonings are 
mental phenomena equally with dreams. Are they more 
than phenomena, to wit, truths ? That question is 
answered by a distinction of powers and a belief in 
powers. When I affirm the e£-o, I affirm the powers 
which compose it. The fundamental faith from which 
there is no escape, which doubt itself does not avoid if it 
has the consistency of an assertion, is trust in our own 
powers. 

The second indubitable principle, far from being among 
primary and simple impressions, involves many complex, 
changeable, and remote ideas. While the notion of spir- 
itual being finds early entrance to human thought, and 
readily reaches, in surrounding and inner experiences, the 
grounds of conviction, this conception only passes very 
slowly, or, rather, is always passing, into that of the Divine 
Being in his infinite wealth of life. The proof of his 
existence shifts its form and force with the entire growth 
of knowledge. This idea, like a revolving light, seen 
across wide stretches of angry ocean, comes and goes, 
gains in clearness and is lost utterly, according to the 
course the anxious mariner is pursuing, the mists that are 
driving by, and its own laws of change. The growth of 
the conception of God, and of our belief in him, covers 
the history of all spiritual development, is the slow 
gathering of intellectual light into one focus of revela- 
tion. It is; therefore, very far from being a first term in 
consciousness, demanding, in its completeness, especial 
explanation. The difference between later and earlier 
discussions in philosophy, between empirical and spec- 
ulative methods, gathers distinctness at this very point, 
the effort to trace our more complex notions through 
their stages of growth. Our idea of God, whatever it 



DESCARTES. I/I 

I may be, must be justified by the presentation of his 
attributes in the world about us, and, therefore, calls for 
no supernatural origin. 

Of the various processes of thought, difficult to verify 
because of their scope and complexity, the most difficult 
is this belief in the being of God. Yet Descartes laid 
hold of it as so certain within itself as to be fittingly set 
up as one of the three pillars that were to support all 
knowledge. 

The ideas involved in the first assertion, I think, there- 
fore I am, though of the most simple character, have 
tasked modern philosophy to its utmost, in a search for 
their origin and validity. The chief problem of later 
inquiry has been found in the source of these notions, 
consciousness, causation, existence, on which this and 
like assertions turn. The effort, on the part of Descartes, 
to define fundamental truth, disclosed the need of more 
exact definition and discriminating analysis. The chief 
merit of Descartes lay in the effort he made to attain 
ultimate truth rather than in the exact form of that 
effort, and in the ready use he made of primitive terms 
of thought. Descartes helped himself forward over 
obscure and difficult places by a tacit acceptance of 
•innate ideas. He then proceeded, at the earliest mo- 
ment, to win authority for human beliefs from the 
veracity of God. This being conceded, certainty attaches 
to the ideas and processes which he has impressed on the 
mind. His philosophy, therefore, in spite of the bold 
search for fundamental truth with which it starts out, 
soon takes refuge in religious faith. It is our convic- 
tions on this side that steady and confirm inquiry. The 
first spurt of reason is exhausted in finding its way to 
God. Yet there is no consistency in such a method. 



172 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

We must make a true beginning, either in ourselves or in 
God. If God finds us, then we must abide in his Hght. 
If we find him, then ultimate trust is in our own reason. 
Is not the truth rather this? our fellowship with God is 
one of reason, and God finds us, and we him, in a fellow- 
ship of truth which involves throughout self-sustaining 
and guiding light. The process is rational in all its 
stages, and so accepts a rational reference. We — a ver- 
itable we — live and move and have our being in God. 
The reason of God arises in and under our own reason. 

The notion of innate ideas, which Descartes entertained 
as indisputable bequests to knowledge, necessarily drew 
attention at once in critical inquiry, and became, in its 
acceptance or rejection, a distinctive feature of philoso- 
phy. The untiring discussion by which this question has 
been brought down to our own time well discloses how 
much argument and insight are called for to secure changes 
of position in starting points that may seem very trivial. 
The notion of ideas, as complete terms of knowledge, re- 
maining with us from a previous experience, or directly 
awakened in us by God, has been displaced by the in- 
quiries. What are the powers of mind? How far is it 
active, and how far is it passive, in knowing? What, 
occasion being given, does it furnish to the processes 
of thought, and what does it receive from the objects of 
thought ? 

On these questions there has virtually been a change 
of sides in the schools of philosophy. The empiricist 
holds that the mind, in its extreme passivity, bears down 
with it by inheritance impressions which define the forms i 
and outlines of knowledge — impressions closely allied to 
the innate ideas of Descartes. The intuitionalist affirms 
that the power of knowing is preeminently active, ra- 



DESCARTES. 1 73 

tional ; and, no matter what expansion It may experience 
by growth, that it remains, in its radical characteristics, a 
putting forth of a primitive, distinct energy in living in- 
sight. Descartes helped to precipitate this discussion. 
His difficulty, and the difficulty of his time, lay very 
much in leaving the mind too passive under the action 
of God. God's reason is not thrust upon us, but rises 
within us, and is always and ever our reason. A unity 
of thought does not obliterate a distinction of person- 
alities. 

A second point in which Descartes and the Cartesians 
who followed him strongly influenced subsequent philos- 
ophy was the relation of matter and mind. His belief 
tended to extreme dualism. Matter and mind stood 
over against each other in a very separate and incommu- 
nicable way. This question is fundamental in our appre- 
hension of the universe, What are the relations of matter 
and mind to each other? Ancient and mediaeval philos- 
ophy handled it in a wearisome — how much philosophy 
is wearisome, groping its way among inquiries which 
awaken thought, but are beyond its grasp — discussion of 
the relation of the general and the particular. The 
general stood for ideas, mind ; the particular stood for 
sensuous experience, matter. To interlock these two in 
a living way without dwarfing either, it found a most 
perplexing problem. Conclusions which at first seemed 
satisfactory, traced a little farther, led to the loss of one or 
other of the two terms, or a hopeless separation of them. 
Thus the doctrine of Aristotle seemed the best-balanced 
statement. The general and the particular have insepa- 
rable and substantial being in and with each other — a 
notion not far from that of Spinoza. Yet this assertion 
lands us in mysticism. We virtually affirm a union in 



1/4 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

Space of distinct elements, and, when we undertake to 
specify that which belongs to one and the other, we deny 
it again. We waver between difference and identity, till 
we make nothing of either. Sensuously the particular 
absorbs the general ; intellectually the general absorbs 
the particular ; and we are compelled to go back to a dis- 
tinct statement of each, under its own presentations, be- 
fore we can make anything of them. The material re- 
mains material, and the intellectual intellectual, in spite 
of all our fusion. 

Modern philosophy puts this question — at least, this is 
the form which it is constantly assuming — as the relation 
of reason to law : Does law inhere in reason, or is reason 
itself one of the expressions of law ? Law finds its most 
universal exponent in physical relations. Is this its 
primary exponent ? Reason involves conscious relations, 
and so inheres in the activity of mind. Is this fact the 
true ultimate ? Do all construction, all exposition, rest 
here, or do they arise in mind as it were from a deeper 
depth, so that reason itself, in reference to order, is sec- 
ondary and phenomenal, the seats of law being hidden in 
the opaqueness and darkness of things ? Whence does 
light come ? One makes answer, From mind. Another 
makes answer, From matter. One afifirms it arises from 
reason, which can alone receive it. Another declares, It 
inheres in law, which can alone retain it. 

Mediaeval philosophy also handled this question as a 
discussion of the government of God and the freedom of | 
men. Pure spirit was, to the theologian, represented in 
God only. Man was deeply involved in the physical 
world, with which he is associated. Is he so involved in 
it, and are enveloping circumstances so pressed upon him 
by the divine will, as to completely contain his life and 



DESCARTES. 1/5 

exhaust Its possibilities? These questions cannot be 
answered otherwise than by a distinct affirmation of the 
nature of mind and of matter. Before we can afifirm lib- 
erty, we must deepen this division between physical and 
intellectual activity. Intelligence, spirit, must stand here, 
and physical things there. Man must win his liberty 
with God, and matter must sink into an intermediate 
term, open to the uses of both. 

This discussion, worn so threadbare as that of the free- 
dom of the will, appears in modern thought as the con- 
flict of the natural and the supernatural. Physical laws, 
in their exactness and unchangeableness, stand for the 
natural, and all intervention of mind for the supernatural. 
The struggle goes on between the two, as science, as 
religion, as philosophy ; with a determined effort, on the 
one hand, to make the causal relation all-inclusive, and, 
on the other hand, to supplement it and complete it in 
the independent connections of reason. The most funda- 
mental point, therefore, we are always touching in philos- 
ophy, is the relation of matter to mind, reason to law, 
comprehension to order. If comprehension Is the shadow 
of an order which inheres In things, then we reach one 
result ; if order Is the light which follows in the wake of 
comprehension, we attain a very different conclusion. 

Descartes, though not himself reaching the full force of 
his doctrine, led his disciples to an absolute dualism, 
which has given occasion to revolt after revolt in unten- 
able forms of monism. Unity is the fruit of all success- 
ful Inquiry. The mind, in satisfaction of its own rational 
Impulses, pursues it with unwearied effort everywhere. 
How shall it be attained in the widest field of all, that of 
universal being? This Is the one absorbing question of 
philosophy, and has been put with renewed vigor because 



176 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

of the dualism contained in the doctrines of Descartes. 
Thought and extension he regarded as attributes of in- 
communicable substances. He thus made the most of 
the mystery, so-called, of the interaction of matter and 
mind. It became the turning-point of his philosophy, 
and a constant demand for some more admissible solu- 
tion of the problem. 

A false idea of mystery arises at this point. Knowl- 
edge necessarily has limits, and we are tempted to call 
these limits, one and all, mysterious, as darkness is mys- 
terious in contrast with light. But this is only a popular 
and childish use of language. Reason, in entire consist- 
ency with itself, recognizes its own laws, and that these 
laws involve certain limitations. This fact is not mys- 
terious. Mystery is present only in connection with in- 
tervening spaces, which ought to be coherently covered 
by the web of thought, and are not so united. It is not 
the ultimate that is unintelligible, mysterious, but rela- 
tions, as yet untraced, that lie within it. Ultimate terms 
arise necessarily, are accepted distinctly as the starting- 
points of reason, and share the light of all its processes. 
The properties of an element, for example, are not mys- 
terious. Our knowledge begins with them, and if not 
with these particular elements, then with some other ele- 
ments. We might as well say that the taper which gives 
us light is an obscure term in our experience, because we 
are not looking at it by a light other than its own. The 
relation between a first and second experience in the 
progress of mind may seem to us obscure, if we try to 
contemplate it under other relations than those in which 
it offers itself, to transform an immediate sequence into 
an intermediate one. Our error lies in pushing against a 
limit as if it were not a limit. The true comprehending 



DESCARTES. 177 

process is, in these cases, found in a determination of 
boundaries, and in accepting them as fast as we find 
them. 

Thus the connection between a thought and a feeUng, 
or between a vohtion and the physical activities which 
follow it, is not, in any proper sense, obscure or mysteri- 
ous, if it is ultimate. All our processes of thought lie 
within these and like connections, and cannot, from the 
nature of the case, enclose them. First terms must be 
rationally, cheerfully accepted, not as something forced 
upon us, but as something given to us, germinal to all 
truth. Whenever we are dealing with phenomena in 
their sequences, whether in the physical world or the 
mental world, or in the union of the two, and learn the 
order of their succession, we must needs be satisfied with 
it. It is the very thing we are in search of. We cannot 
forever insert between events intervening events. Even 
if we could, the relation of each of these to those that 
touch it on either hand would still share that unwise 
mystery that we have cast over the whole movement. 
The success of our pursuit of knowledge is found in 
reaching these very ultimates. We shall find occasion 
to shift ultimates, but never to set them aside. We 
deny, then, that there is any mystery, in any sense that 
makes of it a philosophical difficulty, in the action of 
mind on matter, or of matter on mind. This connection 
offers an example simply of ultimate dependencies, which 
we are meeting everywhere. 

That the two sets of phenomena occur under different 
form-elements does not affect the force of our conclusion. 
A physical event takes place in space, a mental event in 
consciousness. But space and consciousness are no more 
exclusive of each other than they are inclusive of each 

12 



1/8 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

other. To assert exclusion is to give them both space 
relations. They are simply different. Difference does 
not exclude interaction, it makes it only the more signifi- 
cant. Mind, in acting on matter, is not acting where it is 
not, for the dependencies of place are simply inapplicable 
to it. We have no terms of thought which render the 
interaction of mind and matter impossible, while experi- 
ence affirms it every moment. This relation is an ulti- 
mate, and as admissible as any other ultimate. 

Having gratuitously placed this impassable gulf be- 
tween the two forms of being, Descartes was compelled 
to look about for some way of uniting them, and neces- 
sarily found no satisfactory method of restoring a connec- 
tion whose primitive form he had denied. He regarded 
the pineal gland as the seat of the soul, and the point of 
interaction between it and the body. But this view was 
only possible because his thought had not cleared itself. 
Incommunicable entities are not helped by a pineal gland. 
They cannot touch each other in it as an intermediate 
term. It belongs wholly on one side of the dividing line. 

Nor could his physiological theory be helped out by 
his religious faith. He wished to unite the two worlds 
by the intervention of God. Our knowledge of the 
physical world, he thought, and our power over it, come 
to us by the divine mediation. This belief, in the hands 
of Geulinx (1625), became the doctrine of ''occasional 
causes." Occasion being given by our volition, God 
causes the physical actions which follow ; and occasion 
being given by material objects, God awakens in us the 
sensations associated with them. 

This belief was further modified by Malebranche^ 
(1638), an amiable and dreamy ecclesiastic, into a literal 
rendering of the assertion, We live and move and have 



DESCARTES. 1/9 

our being in God ; we participate in the consciousness of 
God, and so enter into knowledge and power by him. 
Thus a retreat from dualism was opened up on the side 
of idealism. Idealism would readily flow from such a 
doctrine. We can no more ascribe to the action of God 
than to that of man the power to effect a union between 
perfectly heterogeneous entities. The two must be ab- 
sorbed and softened in the nature of God, and this can 
be accomplished only by idealism. In the meanwhile, 
the difficulty is not in the least relieved by assigning 
to the intervention of God an interaction, which is in 
itself impossible. This is merely confounding thought 
by omnipotence. 

Malebranche associated with the belief of our union 
to the world of knowledge in God a doctrine of consider- 
able interest, when it is made to rest on a more inde- 
pendent basis, that of the constant activity of the mind. 
Our view of the nature of the mind and of its relation to 
the body will be somewhat modified if we regard its 
activity as constant within itself, and not as liable to 
complete arrest in subjection to states of the body. The 
proof of this activity must be chiefly empirical, and can 
hardly be absolute. 

The consequences of Descartes' doctrine of dualism 
came slowly out, and were found more and more inad- 
missible. He regarded animals as automata, a cunning 
mechanism of sensibilities played upon by the outward 
world. This doctrine was at a later period applied to 
man by De la Mettrie. The inconsistencies in the phi- 
losophy of Descartes became increasingly obvious. If 
the sensibilities of the animal are so associated with the 
body as to be simply a device for its government, like 
sensibilities in man lose their spiritual character. We 



l8o TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

have, In an extreme form, that separation between sen- 
suous states and intellectual ones which appeared in the 
philosophy of Aristotle, and which breaks up the unity of 
the mind within itself. If the soul is without extension, 
it ought not to be able to find contact with the brain, even 
at a single point. Neither would this contact be of any 
moment when secured, if the two are incommunicable in 
nature. 

What is possible to God, to wit, action both in matter 
and in mind, cannot, from any intrinsic difficulty, be im- 
possible to man. The gulf between the two must, after 
all, be capable of being bridged. Is it not, then, just as 
probable that God has given this power of intervention, 
under fixed conditions, to man, as to suppose that he has 
laid upon himself the mechanical connections of the 
world, and that, too, in the face of all appearances ? 
This supposition reduces the universe to deception and 
thimble-rig. Such weakness of method is out of harmony 
with the magnitude of the Maker. Man is enclosed in 
relations which render his life almost visionary. The 
system is one of arbitrary dependencies. i 

Descartes missed in ethics the one great advantage 
which his doctrine of innate ideas should have conferred 
upon him. He regarded the right, not as an eternal law 
of reason, but as dependent on the will of God. He 
thus became a timid moralist, disposed to pay much 
deference to custom and law. The golden mean comes 
easily to be regarded as the path which the many are 
pursuing. There has been a strong theological tendency 
to exalt God by setting him over against his works, made 
insignificant by the majesty of his presence. The glory 
of God must keep company with his power, wisdom, 
and grace in his works. 



MONISM. l8l 

§ 3. From this time on in philosophy the controlling 
effort has been to reach some form of monism. Scarcely 
any speculation escapes from it, as a determining tend- 
ency, in its inner exposition of its own doctrines. If 
the inquirer gives himself, as he thinks, to a simple study 
of facts, as in physiological psychology, the clew of rela- 
tions is still supplied by a desire to bring the very distinct 
phenomena of matter and of mind under one form of 
expression. This tendency to monism — oneness of sub- 
stance and of law — arises from a wrong apprehension of 
what sound reason desires. Its search is not for monism, 
but for unity. If we were to attain to a one, identical 
with itself throughout, w^e could never, by means of it, 
win again the two. We should have utterly ruined our- 
selves by our success. Diversity, real, not formal ; signifi- 
cant, not accidental, is as much a necessity of thought as 
is unity ; nay, more than unity, since no claim for unity 
can arise except in the presence of this diversity. Mon- 
ism is the loss of the primary term of construction ; 
through it, of the secondary term of construction ; and 
through them both, of the whole process with which we 
have been so long and so diligently occupied. Plurality 
of terms is as essential to a universe as plurality of 
methods. We can have no complexity without the vari- 
ous elements that are framed into it in their manifold 
properties and dependencies. It is the same sort of folly 
to endeavor to wipe out the first fundamental division of 
things and actions by which we get to ourselves two eter- 
nal terms of construction in the universe, as it would be 
to reduce elements in chemistry to one by arbitrary hy- 
potheses, and with no power to restore the diversity lost 
in the process. It is not only the most direct test of 
knowledge to accept ultimates, elements ; it is a necessity 



1 82 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

of knowledge, since knowledge lies in relations, these very 
relations which diverse qualities give us. If we resolve 
differences into purely formal dependencies, our knowl- 
edge becomes so illusory as by no means to correspond 
to the rugged facts of experience. When we seem to 
have grasped the last term in knowledge, knowledge it- 
self melts away before the eye like a dissolving mist. 
Monism and dualism, an absolute one and an absolute 
two, are equally opposed to truth. An absolute one or 
an absolute two cannot give conditions of construction. 
Not one, because all relations are lost in its homogeneity. 
Precisely in the measure of that homogeneity distinctions 
disappear. Not two, because each, by the supposition, 
stands out of relation to the other, and for building 
purposes we have not two. In dualism, matter is not a 
product of mind, nor mind a product of matter. Both 
are eternally diverse and absolutely independent modes 
of being, and can, therefore, stand on no terms of con- 
struction — unless it be purely mechanical ones — with each 
other. They are impenetrable to each other, cannot so 
much as collide with each other, while their apparent 
connections are the strangest of illusions. We have two 
pillars on which to build up our universe, only we cannot 
embrace them both in the same field of vision. What- 
ever we lay upon one is wholly lost to the other. 

If we are, then, to reach unity, we must have primitive 
differences that are related to each other, elements that 
can act upon each other, ends that can be concurred in 
by diverse processes. The wider the separation, the 
deeper the unity. This necessity excludes monism and 
dualism alike. Our one must be distinctly two, our two 
must be concurrently one. This condition is met in mat- 
ter and mind. The universe is simple and apprehensible 



I 



MONISM. 183 

by means of the very fact that its first division is a bifur- 
cation under terms that are not only harmonized with 
each other, but carry harmony to all later divisions. 
Mind remains forever mind by virtue of its own irresolv- 
able phenomena; matter, forever matter, by its distinct 
laws. The two together, not by separation, but by inter- 
penetration, not by equality of relations, but by subordi- 
nation, give us a universe which gains material expression 
and is full of spiritual power. This division is the deep- 
est possible, that which lies between distinct form ele- 
ments, between space and consciousness — the letter and 
the spirit. Reason appears in the phenomena of mind, 
and reappears in those of matter — our experience reiter- 
ates this in a limited way — as directly or indirectly the 
ruling law in both. When we reach the profoundest 
union in reason, and the widest diversity and variety in 
its distinct modes of expression, we have a universe in 
its sensuous magnificence and in its mental force. Our 
unity lies back of our universe, is deeper than it, is no 
monismof things that subdues and deadens their differ- 
ences, as water is frozen into crystals, but a union of 
ideas widening out into grander and grander fulfilments. 
Our approach to union is always an ascension, a penetra- 
tion, into the very life of things, into reason. 

The universe that philosophy has so assiduously 
sought in ways so diverse, by assimilating mind to matter 
or matter to mind, or by uniting them in one common sub- 
stance, has resulted, and must ever result, in confusion, 
inevitable and all-absorbing. The mist spreads over the 
entire heavens and settles so low on the earth that we 
lose vision of our own hands and feet. The monism 
of inclusion, the inclusion of all in one substance, in one 
law of being, has always resulted in a most unempirical 



1 84 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

and contradictory interchange of activities between mind 
and matter. Take the effort to reach monism when it 
has turned in an empirical direction. Unable to dispense 
with intellectual qualities, this philosophy has slowly and 
insensibly transferred them to matter, so that matter is 
made to do the work of mind, with no added clearness, 
but fresh confusion rather. We have the same ultimate, 
inscrutable qualities, only we now have them where our 
experience has not placed them, instead of where it 
has placed them. The extent to which the activities of 
mind, by insensible but continuous transfer, are filched 
from the spirit, to reappear as the native endowments of 
matter, is very astonishing. Having lost a soul in man, 
we replace it by a thousand souls in atoms, more vari- 
ously and wonderfully endowed. 

The same is true, though somewhat less obviously so, 
when the movement is in the opposite direction. Sen- 
suous phenomena, ultimate facts of experience, are very 
lamely resolved into logical processes — distinctions — as- 
sociated with them, and which grow out of them. The 
general, a mental product, has the power of begetting 
the particular. The distinguishing process furnishes the 
objects distinguished by it. This development, no longer 
that of pure intelligence, becomes correspondingly neces- 
sary, inevitable, lapsing under the law of causation. The 
flow of reason and the flow of events become indistin- 
guishable. " Having lost matter we sacrifice mind in 
restoring it. 

What is all this but subverting experience, and arrest- 
ing the growth of knowledge in the most arbitrary and 
confusing way? Intellectual activity is most compre- 
hensible where we find it in direct experience, in mind ; 
it is least comprehensible where we have no experi- 



MONISM. 185 

ence of it, in matter. There is here, certainly, oppor- 
tunity for confusion, easy confusion and great confusion, 
and for this reason we should cling closely and tena- 
ciously to those terms of life which give us the empirical 
clews of knowledge. The ultimate outcome of knowl- 
edge should conform to the general ideas under which 
it has grown up. Mental phenomena and physical 
phenomena should lie forever distinct — the one in con- 
sciousness, the other in space — in our processes of com- 
prehension, because they have lain so in the entire 
progress of our experience. The initial step in this sub- 
version of knowledge is found in recognizing a subcon- 
scious region as a seat of true mental action — a region 
admittedly beyond all experience, as it is open neither to 
intellectual insight nor to sensuous inquiry, has no posi- 
tion either in space or consciousness. It is a hypothesis 
that cannot be illustrated in terms of experience, and 
thus it brings confusion and leads to still further confu- 
sion. If the relations which belong to matter and mind 
beyond the scope of our experience are under consider- 
ation, they should conform, in general principles, to those 
that lie within that experience ; otherwise our theories 
become arbitrary and disjointed, carrying with them only 
the shadow of ideas. Monism, either as materialism or 
idealism, steadily deadens knowledge, reduces in force all 
those divisions which have made the world intelligible 
to us, and slowly transfers activities from the sources in 
which we are familiar with them, and the methods under 
which we find them, to other agents and other forms of 
expression. Such a philosophy is not, therefore, no 
matter what it may be called, empirical, but speculative 
and visionary. Knowledge loses coherence within itself 
and hold on the mind. It is not strange that such 



1 86 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

systems do not carry conviction beyond the minds which 
conceive them. They have no affiliation elsewhere with 
habits of thought, ordinary methods of reason. Reason 
must be coherent ; this is its force. 

In connection with this break in experience, and in 
consequence of it, language, in the speech of monism, 
becomes illusory and misleading. It no longer means 
what it is wont to mean, it no longer conforms to sur- 
rounding facts. It gathers images and dependencies in 
one region, and applies them in another alien to them. 
As this change of meanings has arisen slowly and uncon- 
sciously, few are fully aware of it. Most glide along on a 
thin connection of words, like a skater on a film of ice, 
not in the least observant of the abysses of danger and 
uncertainty that may at any moment open beneath theni. 
Schemes of philosophy that profess to have been wrought 
out in closest connection with experience thus become 
prodigious products of logomachy. If their statements 
could be distinctly restored to familiar language in its 
familiar uses, they would seem so far off from ordinary 
forms of thought as to be wholly inadmissible. The ex- 
perience of the philosopher becomes like that of the 
aeronaut. He reports marvellous adventures and strange 
conditions of action ; he dwells upon these unusual terms 
of experience, till they gain a sense of certainty and safety 
wholly alien to the feelings of his fellow-men, very few of 
whom ever Iravel with him these undefined paths, whose 
way-marks are never renewed. Herein are the illusions 
of philosophy, which have provoked, not without reason, 
the scorn of sober and consecutive minds. 

§ 4. The dualism of Descartes so disjointed the intel- 
lectual world that it was at once followed by an effort 
to restore unity. This came not by a quiet return to ex- 



SPINOZA. 187 

perience, but as an extreme form of monism. Spinoza 
(1632) was of Jewish extraction. He spent his life in 
Holland, chiefly at Amsterdam and at The Hague. His 
philosophy gives us the most simple form of monism and 
pantheism. If these doctrines were to prevail, they could 
hardly offer themselves in a more direct way. His sys- 
tem, were it not for its first immediate contradictions of 
experience, would be the clearest and most succinct state- 
ment of the inner relation of things. It covers the whole 
ground with marvellous consistency, and sweeps away the 
distractions of ordinary philosophical and theological dis- 
cussion with remorseless consistency. One can under- 
stand the intense enthusiasm of the mind which conceived 
it, and made its conclusions seem real to it. The man 
was thoroughly enclosed in his scheme. He spun it out 
of his own bowels — if we may for a moment restore the 
word to the early use in which it was associated with 
the spiritual sensibilities — as absolutely as the silkworm 
his cocoon. His philosophy has recently drawn to itself 
fresh attention. His centenary was kept in 1877. One 
may say that his character was swallowed up in his 
philosophy, and bore the same simple, direct, constant 
impress. This seemed to be the relation, rather than the 
more ordinary one in which lines of thought follow char- 
acter. He affords a striking example of the connection 
of character with the tension and sincerity of one's spirit- 
ual activity, with slight reference to any absolute correct- 
ness in it. He was said to be '' a God-intoxicated man ; " 
yet, to most he seems to have missed the very substance 
of the divine idea and of the life which it infolds. 

Spinoza regarded extension and thought as attributes 
of one substance, and that one substance, in its eternal 
unfolding, is God. The two, extension and thought, are 



1 88 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

inseparable. A thought corresponds to each form of ex- 
tension, and extension to every expression of thought. 
The two forever run parallel and reflect each other. God 
exists in this movement, and in no way aside from it. 
This evolution is a necessity of the terms involved in it, 
and so a necessity of the divine nature. Man is the 
highest expression of these unfolding terms. He, there- 
fore, no more than the causal energies in which he is 
involved, possesses liberty. The knowledge of the senses 
is partial and confused, as compared with that of the 
intuitions. It is less evolved, more primary, than this 
higher insight of the spirit. 

This theory, weighed by itself, is very complete and 
coherent. The difficulty with it is that it stands in vio- 
lent contradiction with the first terms of our experience. 
While, therefore, its inner force has given it much influ- 
ence in philosophy, it has made no progress in two cen- 
turies as an accepted term in general knowledge. With 
all its symmetry and fructifying force in the mind which 
begat it, it has dropped dead, with no power of general 
propagation. The product of a dialectic imagination, it 
has no more hold on life, no more Aveight of truth, than 
the tales of a sensuous fancy. 

We do not find extension the constant accompaniment 
of thought, nor thought in immediate union with things. 
The only fact that approaches this statement and gives 
color to it- is that things are orderly, have in them, for 
the most part, an inner arrangement of reason, and that 
reason sets itself at work at once on things. But the two 
statements are far away from each other, as interpreted 
by the accumulated experience of mankind. Thought 
has its own exclusive existence in consciousness, quite 
detached from extension : and extension has its exclusive 



i 



SPINOZA. 1 89 

existence in space, wholly separate from thought as a 
conscious, vital process. Before we can accept the state- 
ment of Spinoza, we must overlook the very substance of 
thought, the conscious, coherent action of reason within 
itself; or, rather, we must accept it and deny it at the 
same time. We must accept it as the highest expression 
of thought, to wit, in man ; we must deny it as any neces- 
sary characteristic of thought in its inferior forms, to wit, 
in the crystal. We thus are called on to merge the high- 
est and lowest movements in each other, to identify 
things, actions, at the farthest possible remove from each 
other, to swallow up all the differences of experience in 
an unintelligible homogeneity, and so to reach a philoso- 
phy. When a stone rolls down a declivity, and an artist 
conceives and executes a statue, we are to recognize one 
identical movement, inclusive of the same attributes, ex- 
tension and thought. Things which are arranged con- 
structively, words which express ideas, are made to con- 
tain thought in the same certain way as the mind itself. 
Thoughts which occupy the mind intensely, yet gain no 
expression in the world of things, are made to involve 
extension as much as the life of a plant. In spite of all 
the ingenuities of speech, in spite of all its confusions, the 
fundamental assertion of Spinoza flatly and extendedly 
contradicts experience, and so subverts the first terms of 
thought that are wrought into the entire framework of 
knowledge. If we are willing to overlook this difficulty, 
and proceed as if it did not exist, we shall doubtless find 
much to delight us, and nothing to peremptorily check 
us, in our airy movement. It is the first step that tells 
in errors of thought as in errors of conduct. To identify 
extension and thought, matter and mind, as coequal and 
coeternal attributes of one substance, virtually wipes the 



IQO TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

board clean of all we have hitherto traced upon it, and 
leaves us to begin anew the problem of philosophy. 

The apparent reverence which accompanies this sys- 
tem is, within itself, illusory. Man becomes the highest 
development of reason ; the movement of thought is 
in him most clear and distinct. He is, by virtue of 
the entire progress of things, the most advanced prod- 
uct of the world. He marches in front. The wis- 
dom and grace of God are not simply best expressed 
in him, they reach their own fulness, their own conscious- 
ness, in him. Not only is the transition of thought, from 
its marvellous perfection among things into a higher 
stage of expression in consciousness, unexplained ; — 
indeed, simple continuity of movement is thought, for 
some unrendered reason, to dispense with all explanation 
— not only, considering the range in reason of the uni- 
verse and the range of man's powers in comprehension, 
are we left at a loss to understand why this transfer 
should be regarded as a passage into a higher phase 
of being; the majesty of God is summed up in the 
mechanical movement of physical things, in the uncon- 
scious, or half-conscious, instincts of living things, in the 
obscure — how very obscure — thoughts of men. The uni- 
verse was not to Spinoza the first intelligible syllable in a 
sentence already complete to the mind uttering it, it was 
an inarticulate cry, slowly struggling toward articulation ; 
it was not a fact afloat on reason, it was a blind pushing 
of reason into light. The God to whom the mind of 
Spinoza was ever bowing in worship, was, after all, found, 
in his highest expression, in Spinoza himself. 

The illusion of language can hardly go further than in 
this philosophy of pantheism. Spinoza is to be regarded 
as, in a high degree, the victim of his own enchantments 



SPINOZA. 191 

of speech. Language has won Its real significancy on the 
tongues of men who are profound, if not discriminating, 
behevers both in matter and mind, both in man and 
God. Its words express, as matrices in the rock, Avonder- 
ful and proHfic life, and they must be interpreted as they 
have arisen, along these lines of spiritual development. 
To take these words of this lineage of the spirit, so buoy- 
ant with aspiration, and set them up simply to mark 
stages of physical unfolding along the sensuous world as 
it is and has been, is to mislead us in every way, is to turn 
into a milestone on a commercial highway a slab which 
is covered with the inscriptions of praise of a past gen- 
eration. Men seem to do this, but do not really do it. 
Spinoza did not fully accomplish it. More and deeper 
meanings hang about the words, and flash, as an inner 
illumination, through the sentences, than belong to them 
in the service they are performing, and in the system of 
which they are a part. 

In this philosophy the birth of a truth is simply the 
earliest expression of it. It perishes as soon as it passes 
from the mind. The roots of all spiritual things lie 
hidden in the physical world. Nothing rises out of it 
except to fall back at once into it. Life is no more 
than the bubble on the water, that dissolves the light and 
so for an instant gains color. Immortality is the perpe- 
tuity of the stream into which the bubble breaks. God 
is not a spiritual presence pervading all things, but only 
the things themselves, in their unexpounded, relentless, 
painful, and perplexing flow. The spirit is alone. Its 
strange endowments in consciousness serve simply to 
bring close about it the fears, solicitudes, hopeless long- 
ings, of its situation. It is the forlorn hope of the universe, 
assailing in vain the physical conditions which envelop it. 



192 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

These theories of Spinoza were, indeed, a spiritual intox- 
ication, a whirl of conceptions which were the empty 
images of realities, and cut the mind off from any quiet 
possession of the world. 

Everything with Spinoza was intense. His mind was 
trained to the highest activity. Pure intellectuality and 
pure spirituality were one and the same in him. No vice 
entered into his life to part them. His ethical system, 
though, like his philosophy, disembowelled of all ordi- 
nary organs, functions, duties of existence, retained, as it 
needs must, the old ring of words. Virtue, according to 
Spinoza, is a movement by which we harmonize our 
nature within itself and with our fellow-men. The highest 
attainable state is a clear consciousness of God, and of 
our relation to him. Yet, as there is no personality in 
God, no freedom in man, no stage of consciousness other 
than that which reflects the things about it, this lan- 
guage can only mean that we are to thoroughly feel the 
chill of the cold waters on which we are floating. 

Spinoza strove to reduce moral principles to a demon- 
strative process. He thus became a victim to the mysti- 
cism of exact ideas. The facts, in their own complexity 
and variability, were not before him, but abstract con- 
cepts, the counters of his dialectics, by which he defined 
intellectual positions, and, for the moment, indicated 
their relations to each other. His definitions attempt to 
carry the insight of the mind beyond its real scope ; his 
deductions from them become barren, and even lose logi- 
cal coherence. Conceptions that are primarily dependent 
on facts cannot be held clear and firm without them. 
The demonstrative methods of mathematics are a con- 
stant snare to us, tempting us to seek the same rigidity 
of proof in handling ideas which are obscure and change- 



LEIBNITZ. 193 

able. Few men have more needed to have the inner 
world confronted with the outer one, to be stretched 
upon it and put to strain by it, than did Spinoza. He 
idealized philosophy, till he had lifted it far away from all 
the experience which it is called on to expound. 

He also offers an example of the certainty with which 
mental laws are subjected to physical ones, when the 
two lines of development, spiritual and material, are taken 
up in one process. If extension and thought are attri- 
butes of one substance, then thought must often be 
nothing more than those causal relations which unite 
events. It then comes throughout to be but another 
expression of material dependencies, and disappears in its 
own spontaneous, primitive powers. Our false methods 
of synthesis succeed only by so impoverishing the uni- 
verse as to reduce it to their own measurements. 

§ 5. Leibnitz (1646) gives us the pivotal point of transi- 
tion in Germany. In him, philosophy passed over to its 
modern form. He was a man of large attainments and 
practical penetration. He was born at Leipsic, and spent 
his life chiefly in public service under the Elector of May- 
ence and the Duke of Hanover. The beliefs of Leibnitz 
stood in immediate relation to those of Descartes and 
Spinoza, and were themselves very influential in later 
German philosophy. 

The most urgent problem before him was the relation 
of matter and mind. The doctrines pressing on his atten- 
tion were the dualism of Descartes, the monism of Spi- 
noza, and the Aristotelian conception of the passive char- 
acter of matter, something that is moved and does not 
move. The chief result of his long meditation on these 
questions was the monad. The word had been employed 
by Bruno to express an atom, infinitesimal in dimen- 
13 



194 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

sions, and combining mental and physical powers. Leib- 
nitz uses it to express a point without dimensions, con- 
taining the germs of both relations. The monad, in the 
scheme of Leibnitz, was an indivisible, unextended sub- 
stance. He arrived at this result by considering the 
infinite divisibility of matter. The ultimate, he thought, 
could not be reached and retained in any atom, however 
small, because the process of subdivision might pass 
beyond it. It would be an aggregate, just as certainly as 
the largest bodies. Moreover, such an atom would have 
no true unity ; an aggregation is not a unit. He there- 
fore regarded his ultimate, his monad, as without exten- 
sion. In opposition to Aristotle, he thought matter to 
be active as well as passive. The physical world is not, 
in construction, simply mechanical. An inner energy 
guides and governs it. In disagreement with Descartes, 
each of his monads combines two elements, force and 
idea ; the idea the law of the force, the force the expres- 
sion of the idea, ^^here are as many kinds of monads as 
there are diverse forms of things, and each monad has its 
own appetency, which may be obscure or clear, wholly 
instinctive or wholly rational. There is every gradation 
of ideas, as regards distinctness, and an idea can, there- 
fore, be obscurely present in things wholly material. 
Physical existence and intellectual existence are not, 
therefore, distinct from each other. Leibnitz would have 
been at one- with Spinoza in his assertion of monism, had 
he not denied extension to the monad. His notion of 
substance was closely allied to the idea entertained of the 
soul. The notion of ultimates is to be developed on this 
side. These primitive monads are closely analogous in 
nature to each other, reflect each other, and reflect the 
entire universe. The perfect monad, pure activity, pure 



LEIBNITZ. 195 

idea, IS God. Other monads are fulguratlons of God. 
There is a complete gradation of monads from those 
which constitute material objects to those which com- 
pose pure spirit. Extended bodies are made up of an 
aggregate of ultimate monads, and living bodies combine 
under one living monad. 

(Monads do not act directly on each other. The mind 
does not affect the body, nor the body the mind. All 
monads are independent centres of force, fixed in amount 
and direction. They have no power to impart influence 
or to receive it. Thus, the notion of the Cartesian was 
extended — and with equal reason — to all monads, not- 
withstanding their common construction and close gra- 
dation. Each monad is ordered within itself in reference 
to all other monads, and so moves in absolute harmony 
with them. This is the doctrine of " preestablished har- 
mony," a harmony that rests back for its maintenance on 
the one pure, perfect monad, God. 

Descartes had made a decided step in advance in assert- 
ing the permanently distinct nature of matter and mind, 
the one involving extension, the other thought. Unfort- 
unately the value of this statement was much impaired 
by the accompanying doctrine of the absolute incom- 
municability of the two. Spinoza had reaffirmed their 
constant interpenetration, but, in turn, had marred his 
statement by denying their distinct nature. They were 
simply inseparable attributes of one substance. Leibnitz 
retained the unity of Spinoza, but established it, not in 
the unity of substance, but in the unity of ideas — ideas 
with every diversity of distinctness, but always concur- 
rent in method, and ever resting back on the one abso- 
lute idea, God. Here, virtually, is the only basis of 
unity. Unity is not a coherence of existence, either in 



196 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

space or time ; it is only and always a coherence of rela- 
tions in the reason. Leibnitz, in the spirit of Descartes, 
narrowed down this unity of reason in a very gratuitous 
way by denying all reactions between monads. The uni- 
verse is not a web, it is a floating skein of threads held 
tightly in one hand. 

Accept the fundamental distinction of Descartes ; lay 
hold of the unity of idea offered by Leibnitz ; grant the 
easy interaction conceded by Spinoza ; cast aside the 
mechanism of them all, and we have at once the diversity 
which is affirmed in our daily experience, and that gath- 
ering of all things into one which is the inextinguishable 
desire, the unending labor, of reason. ' 

The system of Leibnitz, taken by itself, is inadmis- 
sible, not simply because of its want of coherence within 
itself, but because it stands so widely out of relation with 
human experience, which all philosophy must include 
and expound. The movement in each monad, in the 
human mind, is a dumb show, and not the real progress 
of events which it seems to be. We are dependent for 
the validity of facts, not on our own painstaking proc- 
esses, our own powers of penetration, but on a divine 
harmony by which different events keep pace with each 
other. Leibnitz aptly likened the universe to clocks that 
keep time with each other, though in no way united. 
All is mechanism, and events are struck off, each with each, 
with no more interdependence than have the wheels of 
the different clocks either with themselves or with the 
movements of the solar system. Such a conception is 
but the impalpable and distorted shadow of the world in 
which we live. It is not strange that Leibnitz believed 
that all thinking could, with proper care, be reduced to 
reckoning. A movement of this sort, like the running of 



LEIBNITZ. 197 

railroad .trains by a starter, should be capable of numeri- 
cal expression in a time-table. 

Though Leibnitz conceived his system in rejection of a 
purely mechanical view of the universe, it still retained a 
taint of this most crude method of exposition. His unity 
is not the pure unity of idea, but the unity of a monad 
which has no clear, apprehensible standing either in the^ 
physical or the spiritual world. Out of unextended 
monads he constructs an extended universe. Under 
the notion of infinite divisibility, the mind, in search of 
the ultimate, is pushed into an unintelligible position, 
and then finds its way back again into the world of reali- 
ties, in contradiction of the priaciples of its own process. 
Out of the divisible it cannot reach the indivisible ; or, 
attaining it, it cannot return to the divisible by means 
of it. Monads are virtually crowded out of the material 
world by a denial of extension. They can come to 
nothing unless allowed to freely reappear in the spiritual 
world, and therein to become living souls. There is in 
them no true conjunction of matter and mind, and, used 
as a common point between the two, they can only 
breed confusion. The excellency of the conception of 
pure spirit is that it is pure power. It shakes off all 
mechanism, and calls for no dead centres of any sort. 
The monads of Leibnitz are, after all, only bits of being, 
wholly unempirical, incapable of distinct statement 
within themselves, and, at last, entirely unserviceable as 
constructive material. They are closely allied to that 
brood of intermediates and infinitesimals which philos- 
ophy has so often brought forward to fill in spaces which 
might much better be left vacant. We cannot explain 
the universe, in its interaction, by crowding its open 
areas with atoms. We must come, sooner or later, to 



198 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

the naked fact of power, action, and reaction between 
things. 

We can see in the theory of Leibnitz a coming truth 
of science, a point at which it was to give great aid. 
Leibnitz was not satisfied with the passivity of matter. 
He thought it an embodiment, rather, of forces. While 
chemistry leads us to this result, it helps us over the 
puzzle of the infinite divisibility of matter. In actual 
construction, the atom is found with dimensions. The 
physical world starts with extension as well as maintains 
it throughout. 

The system of Leibnitz tends strongly to pure idealism. 
Force, that stands for physical energies, and is not merely 
a figurative expression, can gain no existence as an abso- 
lute mathematical centre. Forces must have directions, 
spaces, spheres, through which to declare themselves. 
Physical activities, as much as physical passivities, 
demand extension. The application, of the word force to 
mental activity — as the force of thought — is unfortunate, 
as the energies of the physical and the spiritual world 
have, as forms of being, nothing in common. Thoughts 
can spring up without centres or circumferences, forces 
cannot. The forces with which Leibnitz is dealing in his 
indivisible monads must be wholly drunk up in the idea, 
and go forth from the idea, or there is no union between 
the two. Force, therefore, as a realized physical factor, 
must inevitably disappear in the monad. In reaching 
unity between its two terms, the productive power must 
be lodged with the idea. 

Another direction in which modern science would have 
helped the conception of Leibnitz is that of the alleged 
incommunicability of forces. Leibnitz regarded the sum 
of forces in the universe as ever the same. He secured 



1 



LEIBNITZ. 199 

this uniform aggregate by maintaining the fixed relations 
of each monad. They always count up the same. A 
wider experience teaches us that energies are transferable, 
and are gathered now in one form of expression and now 
in another. Action is saved from wastefulness by re- 
action. The two are distinct terms in one process and 
are intelligible only when taken together. The single 
line of sequence, w'hich Leibnitz provided for in each 
monad, would be especially inapprehensible under modern 
thought. 

While the omnipresence and perfect control of God 
are preserved in this philosophy, they assume a very 
mechanical form, and are taken quite out of the light 
of experience. The monads, the fixed fulgurations, offer 
themselves rather as parts of God than as initiative, cre- 
ative acts, living energies in every form of reaction. Or, 
if they are not parts of God — for the monad admits of 
no parts — we have no hint of the way in w^hich God acts 
through them, since monads are w^holly impenetrable in 
themselves. Monads lie helplessly apart from each other 
in the universe which they compose. Here is an incon- 
sistency akin to that we found in Descartes. The ulti- 
mate monad is expected to accomplish a union alien to 
the nature of monads themselves. Earnestly as Leibnitz 
struggled after an intellectual, living unity, he has lost 
it in the absolute isolation of the monads of which he 
constructed the universe. Separateness and living inter- 
play are the conditions of unity. 

The inevitable idealism of the system of Leibnitz is 
also disclosed in his notion of sensuous phenomena, and 
of space and time. Sensuous experiences are included in 
the history of that ruling monad, mind, not by virtue of 
the action of physical monads on it, but by the harmoni- 



200 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

ous flow of its own experiences. He endeavors to main- 
tain a certain validity for these impressions by means of 
the doctrine of preestabhshed harmonies. But if all mo- 
nads, save the one sensitive monad, mind, were to perish, 
its experiences might remain unaltered. The alteration 
would come, if it came at all, not from a change in the 
enveloping facts, but from a change in the one monad, 
the mind of God. Leibnitz regarded space as the order 
of coexistence in phenomena, and time as their order of 
succession. Neither of them carries the mind beyond 
itself. Herein is the germ of Kantianism, and so of the 
idealism that succeeded Kant. Such land-locked monads 
as those of Leibnitz must, more and more, find all mo- 
tion and sources of motion within themselves. 

Leibnitz opposed himself to Locke, and brought for- 
ward the doctrine of innate ideas, through one more stage 
of development. To the assertion of Locke, There is 
nothing in the understanding, he opposed the assertion, 
Except the understanding itself. But the understanding 
is a monad preeminently endowed, clear and self-con- 
tained in its processes. From its action arise those 
agnate ideas, universal and necessary, which are the con- 
ditions of all knowledge. His image of the bent bow, 
ready at any instant to put forth its power, as an expres- 
sion of the nature of the monad, is particularly appli- 
cable to mind. Empiricism, in its development through 
the disciples of Locke, has utterly reversed the earlier 
conception. Matter no longer stands for that which is 
moved and does not move ; mind for that which moves 
and is not moved. The two have interchanged places. 
Mind is pure receptivity. Its movements follow wholly 
initiatives taken by the physical world. Matter is the 
one eternal storehouse of energy. Mind has no original 



LEIBNITZ. 201 

patrimony of powers, but gleans its spare earnings among 
material forces, as the heavy sheaves of the harvest. 

Leibnitz, while he assigned primitive energy to mind, 
did not concede it liberty. The development of thought 
is fixed within itself. This conclusion follows naturally 
from the doctrine of preestablished harmony. If physical 
and mental, lower and higher, monads are to run parallel 
W4th each other, each must maintain its own ordained 
movement, otherwise the universe is quickly out of joint. 
Moreover, all monads, those of matter and those of mind, 
are harmonious in structure, involving the same elements, 
force and idea. Liberty can hardly be freely conceded 
and consistently maintained till the action of reason is 
taken wholly from the category of causation, and seen to 
involve spontaneity, exercised in the pursuit of truth. 
Its impulses are not expended in darkness and limited in 
direction, but are operative in the light, with an instant 
change of activity according to the relation of the mind 
to the object of search. The spirit is in pursuit, and pos- 
sesses the freedom of exertion and of change which pur- 
suit involves. 

Leibnitz opposed the separation of religion and reason, 
and sought for their reconciliation. He helped forward, 
therefore, true faith, faith in our own powers, faith in 
truth, faith in God, in whom all these relations cohere, 
faith in reason, as the ultimate source of all truth. Au- 
thority is thus not without the mind, but within it, con- 
tained in the divine insight granted it. Inspiration is not 
breath falling upon us, as if we were ships driven by the 
wind ; it is breath fulfilling within us the laws of life. 
Truth is not water drawn in a bucket and offered in a 
cup ; it is a well of w^ater, springing up within the mind 
itself unto everlasting life. 



202 TRANSITIONAL PERSONS. 

The seductive force of the doctrine of monads lay in 
its opposition to the duahsm of Descartes, in the unity 
it seemed to estabhsh between matter and mind, force 
and idea. Yet this first prepossession becomes increas- 
ingly illusory the longer the thoughts dwell upon it. The 
union between force and idea is arbitrary, between monad 
and monad is arbitrary ; while the unity of the monads 
is deceptive, each being diverse from every other, and 
all inferior monads wholly different from that supreme 
monad by whom they are united into one universe. The 
conception is every way inferior in its pliancy and near- 
ness to experience to that of pure spirit, as an ultimate 
form of being. 

Bacon, Descartes, and Leibnitz showed, at the very 
opening of the modern era, the tendencies that were to' 
prevail in England, France, and Germany, respectively. 
This is especially true of Bacon and Leibnitz. We have 
in the one the inelastic, empirical temper of England ; 
and in the other the free, speculative thought of Ger- 
many. Descartes held more even-handed the comple- 
mentary terms of philosophy, yet in a manner so little 
reconciled with experience as to leave the way easily 
open either to materialism or idealism. 



fl 



I 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. The changes by which philosophy passed into a 
new era in England, France, and Germany involved, 
though in different degrees, the same feeling. The mov- 
ing cause was the desire for a philosophy which should 
give more room to inquiry, more freedom to thought, 
and better accommodate itself to the new conceptions 
of physics. The world was fast ceasing, in the minds of 
men, to be a pure mechanism, its relations put upon it 
from without. It was henceforth to be dealt with as a 
very distinct, if not an independent, term in knowledge. 
In England, this tendency to practical inquiry was the 
dominant motive of change. The same tendency was 
present in France, but it did not there so much divert the 
mind from philosophy as lead to its reconstruction. The 
freshest and most influential conclusion of the Cartesians 
was that of the detached character of physical phenom- 
ena. This conclusion was fitted to prepare the way for 
the careful discussion of these phenomena under their 
own laws. 

The system of Leibnitz grew directly out of his early 
acceptance of the mechanical view of the world, and later 
out of his growing sense of its inadequacy. His monads 
were the result of an effort to give inherent energy to all 
forms of being, an effort to bring causes and effects into 



204 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the closest conjunction. Matter ceased to be merely 
stuff, a receptive something on which mind was remotely 
at play. This change in the conception of matter, a 
statement of the new energies conceded it in its simplest, 
most empirical terms, and the union of the forces of 
matter and the powers of mind in a harmonious universe, 
constitute the burden of modern philosophy. 

§ 2. From this time on the development of philosophy 
was much modified in each country by its own national 
life, and can best be treated in three leading lines ; phi- 
losophy in England, in France, and in Germany. The re- 
actions of these three forms of unfolding on each other 
were usually secondary in vigor to the forces operative in 
each of them in direct descent. 

It may be a surprise to us that philosophy, under- 
taking so universal a task, should be seriously affected 
by the conditions of national development. Are not its 
principles — if indeed they are principles — measurably ab- 
solute, the same for all? Science fails of completeness 
because of its amplitude ; philosophy escapes the grasp of 
thought by its profundity. Philosophy aims to give us 
that circle of ideas in which all relations are compre- 
hended. It must, therefore, take on new lights and new 
shadows so long as the great field of facts is only par- 
tially explored. New revelations here will involve new 
exposition there. The sun cannot ascend the heavens 
without altering the expression of the landscape. In- 
sight cannot gain ground in the construction of the world, 
events cannot flow forward in history, society cannot 
take to itself in more felicitous action its spiritual im- 
pulses, without modifying our conception of the form 
and balance of the forces which rule events. Philosophy 
defines the directions of thought, completes our defini- 



NATIONAL FORMS OF PHILOSOPHY. 20$ 

tions, gives a wider range to vision, but can never issue 
in fast conclusions which constrict the universe within 
themselves as if they were purely logical processes. 
These coveted results would be strangulation, not life. 
As philosophy has to do with ultimates, and as ultimates 
are proclaimed only by the full rendering of the facts 
under them, philosophy must ever wait for its last word 
on the progress of events. The divine narrative of life is 
always ready for the deeper meaning, the richer exposi- 
tion, which its own movement involves. 

There is no question of any breadth that does not 
ultimately appeal to philosophy. Physical and spiritual 
issues, with all their comprehensive impulses, are open 
to it ; and, therefore, philosophy must ever keep pace 
with the soul of man, and have an answer as wise as his 
wisest thought, as late as his latest inquiry. Philosophy 
is thus national as well as universal, accepts the phase of 
experience prevalent about it as well as pushes through 
it to that which lies beyond. As is the horizon of facts, 
such is the light that falls upon them and is reflected by 
them. 

It is a direction less adequate than it seems to be: 
Seek simply the truth, follow where the truth leads. 
Men are more frequently misled in philosophy by an 
implicit obedience to a ruling idea than in any other way. 
The French, especially, have scrupulously — it would be 
equally correct to say unscrupulously — followed to their 
extreme results certain clews of thought ; and, as a con- 
sequence, French philosophy has been peculiarly inade- 
quate. The sound temper of philosophy must express 
itself, not so much in the severity of logical processes, as 
in a broad comprehension of data, as in a reluctance to 
do violence to facts, to pass over or abridge any portion 



206 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of them. It must not only harvest the field, it must glean 
it, and that, too, equally in its more subtile as in its more 
palpable phenomena ; equally in those spiritual laws which 
are waiting to be achieved as in those physical laws 
already achieved. Indeed, the deepest significance of 
events is ever the meaning not yet made clear. Philoso- 
phy, therefore, to be conscientious, must be comprehen- 
sive. When a logical development of premises is bring- 
ing one's convictions straight against familiar facts in 
human life, it is only ruthless iconoclasm that, in the 
name of truth, holds on its way. Sound philosophy has 
the wisdom of timidity, regards the unfortunateness of a 
result as a probable disproof, and carefully reasons back- 
wards to the deficiency or error contained in the data. 

English philosophy has been preeminently empirical, 
sensuous, materialistic. It offers, in the line of specula- 
tion, a continuous development, characterized by labori- 
ous inquiry and much sagacity. Yet it has been a prac- 
tical philosophy, a philosophy held strongly in check by 
its relation to the religious and social convictions of the 
people. We understand by a practical people, which the 
English peculiarly are, one which keeps the issues of 
action within a somewhat narrow and somewhat sensuous 
range, and within this range accentuates the comfort- 
yielding processes of life. Thus the test of sound inquiry, 
as indicated by Bacon, is met ; it yields fruit. Such a 
national tendency leads, in philosophy, to giving extreme 
weight to the physical causes and conditions of action, and 
reduces to a minimum the influence of the overshadowing 
ideals and ruling powers of mind — ideals and powers that 
make of life a crusade, a struggle for a holy land that is 
never altogether won. This empirical form of English 
philosophy has, however, been held in check, as well as 



ENGLISH CAST OF THOUGHT. 20/ 

promoted, by the practical force of English character. 
The English have strong restraining social and religious 
beliefs, not of ideal purity, but of much immediate and 
prevalent worth. These have restrained the materializ- 
ing tendency of their philosophy, and not allowed it to 
sweep on unreservedly to conclusions which would wreck 
faith and weaken social construction. What may seem to 
have been the cowardice, has often been the conscien- 
tiousness, of philosophy. It has involved the fundamen- 
tal truth that facts rule philosophy, not philosophy facts. 
If philosophy is pressing hard on long-established and 
current opinion, it is doing it by virtue of some extreme 
premise or sophistical method, and not simply by the 
reserved force of truth. The truth is equally in the phe- 
nomena of society and in the energies that have built 
them up, as in our later speculations concerning them. 
English philosophy has been peculiarly sober and con- 
tinuous in its development by virtue of these two facts, 
the wide, vigorous, practical sentiment which envelops 
its action, and the very definite path which empiricism 
itself assigns to inquiry. Generation after generation of 
thinkers has labored in England to widen and support 
conclusions early indicated in philosophical inquiries. 

In addition to this empirical philosophy, so widely 
accepted and well restrained, there have been occasional 
outbreaks of more spiritual insight. England has not 
lacked points of light and men of an idealistic cast, and 
these have served to abash the sensuous movement about 
them. A philosophy which restores to mind its true 
powers, and rolls back before them the physical forces 
which threaten to ingulf the world, has found, side by 
side with empiricism, brilliant, though far less consecutive 
and well-sustained, expression in England. 



208 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

England also gave birth to the Scottish school, a school 
that sprang up in immediate reaction against the unbelief 
— unbelief in mind, and so unbelief in God — which fol- 
lowed inevitably from the extreme, yet consistent, pres- 
entation of current philosophy given by Hume. This 
school, in turn, has shown much tenacity and has been 
sounder in its conclusions than in its methods. It has 
held fast dogmatically to the leading facts in our spiritual 
life, even when unable to give them any clear and suffi- 
cient exposition. For a full understanding of English 
philosophy we shall need to render, first, this ruling 
empirical tendency, and then to supplement it with the 
sporadic rejection and the systematic opposition which 
it has awakened. 

PART L 

THE EARLY EMPIRICAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

- § 3. Hobbes (1588), the Sage of Malmesbury, offers a 
very typical expression of English speculative character 
on its more positive, but least inviting, side. Strong, 
sinewy, and bold, keen-sighted within narrow and sensu- 
ous bounds and unappreciative beyond them, he was 
safe from attack and from change by virtue of the very 
goodness and badness of his powers. It was a much- 
needed exhortation of Bacon to his countrymen that 
they should" lay aside prepossessions. Familiar feelings 
were as often their medium of knowledge as independent 
inquiry. The vision of a mind saturated with sentiments 
is like that of the owl, narrow, searching, serviceable, and 
in better affiliation with partial darkness than perfect 
light. 

In the view of Hobbes, all substantial being is physical 



HOBBES. 209 

being. The spirit is a corporeal substance. Substances 
are made up of minute parts. The world is a plenum, 
and God is one with the universal ether. Motion is the 
exclusive medium of change, and philosophy is the tracing 
of these changes as causes and effects. All reasoning is 
closely allied to mathematics, an addition and subtraction 
of the forces expressed in motion. Sensation is the prod- 
uct of motion, induced in the organs of sense, and is, 
therefore, an impression which belongs to the receptive 
mind alone. Sensations give rise to returning impres- 
sions, phantasms, and these constitute the staple of knowl- 
edge. This is the first doctrine in English empiricism. 
The productive sources of all knowledge are sensations, 
giving rise to restored impressions. The knowing process 
is a passive rather than an active one. The chief capa- 
bility it involves is the power to receive sensations, and 
repeat them in modified forms. Hobbes regarded will 
simply as the energy of desire ; and liberty, therefore, as 
freedom from restraining force. His conception of the 
universe was as mechanical as it well could be. 

He was especially interested in civic construction, and 
held to it under the most simple form of diabolism. The 
primitive condition of men is one of universal conflict. To 
escape a condition so intolerable, government was insti. 
tuted, involving a compact whose terms are absolute sub- 
mission, on the one side, and protection on the other. 
Power, thus established in the state, is the source of laws, 
and laws define rights and the right. The distinction 
between the two virtually disappears. Religion owes its 
authority to the same source. Whatever worship the 
state prescribes is authoritative ; all else is the erratic 
superstition of individuals. Ethical law is the law of self- 
interest, and the supreme interest lies in preserving the 
14 



2IO ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY, 

state, without which men would lapse into universal bar- 
barism. Ethical law rises no higher than physical law ; 
both rest on force, producing order. The one moral sen- 
timent, therefore, with which Hobbes broke down every 
other, was our conviction in favor of social order. 

A philosophy moving on so low a level, with so com- 
plete a neglect of all the higher sentiments which find 
expression in society and religion, could not gain much 
acceptance ; and yet it was able to prepare the mind for 
those softened opinions which followed it. Hobbes' phi- 
losophy seems to have arisen from the impressions made 
upon him by the first steps which were being taken in 
science, and with which he was familiar. He carried 
kindred conceptions in a very crass way over to mental, 
social, and spiritual phenomena. These phenomena were 
overwhelmed at once in their subtile characteristics, be- 
fore this barbaric invasion. He who has lost the sight of 
one eye, no matter how completely he may retain the 
use of the other, can never command the perspective of 
perfect vision. He merely casts the inadequate construc- 
tions of a mutilated power over all spaces. 
--^ § 4. Locke (1632), who gained a controlling influence 
in English philosophy, and took a position which specu- 
lative thought was busy for a long time, everywhere, 
either in attacking or defending, reducing or expanding, 
finely represented English character in a phase of it 
much more restrained and sympathetic than that offered 
by Hobbes. The chief tenet in his philosophy, chief in 
importance and in the attention which he drew to it, was 
that already enunciated by Hobbes : all knowledge is de- 
rived from sensation. His philosophy was the result of a 
thoroughly empirical tendency, intensified by the study 
of medicine. This connection is very common in the his- 



LOCKE. 2U 

tory of speculation. Methods of reasoning are readily- 
carried over from the body to the mind. 

His chief philosophical work was his essay concerning 
the Human Understanding. Its purpose was to discuss 
the origin of knowledge. He regarded the mind as best 
represented under the image of a screen, a tabula rasa, 
open to all the impressions of the external world. Ideas 
are mental impressions, and arise from sensation and re- 
flection. Sensation is our knowledge of impressions due 
to external objects, and reflection our knowledge of 
other states of mind. These states of mind find their 
material exclusively in sensations. There are no primi- 
tive, innate ideas. Our knowledge arises from comparing 
sensations as to their agreements and disagreements, 
their reality, their coexistence. A portion of the qualities 
of sensation, as those due to motion, belongs to the 
objects themselves ; another portion, as color and sound, 
belongs to the mind alone. 

Those judgments are sound whose truth lies within 
the range of experience and the knowledge dependent on 
it. Among these he put the judgment of the being of 
God. Those judgments which transcend experience, if 
accepted at all, must be accepted as matter of faith. 
Among these he puts the doctrine of immortality. 
Those judgments which are contradictory to each other, 
or to experience, as clearly expressed in mental concep- 
tions, are irrational. He regarded the soul as probably 
immaterial. Freedom of the will is nonsense. The only 
question that can arise in this connection is that of exter- 
nal liberty, the freedom of man. His ethical theory 
rested on happiness, the crude term to which the atten- 
tion of empirical philosophy is always first directed in its 
search for the law of individual and social life. Govern- 



212 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ment owes its validity to a voluntary -surrender of rights 
on the part of its subjects. He thus led off in a direc- 
tion which, though ill-grounded in theory and in fact, 
has been very helpful to liberty. Opposed as he was to 
speculation in philosophy, the most influential doctrine 
in his philosophy of government, that of a social contract, 
was purely speculative. 

Locke had found that eager debate led to no results, 
because there were no common and sufficient criteria 
of truth. The ultimate sources, therefore, of knowledge 
called for fresh consideration, that men might, if pos- 
sible, bring effective and final arguments in support of 
their positions. The most important contribution of 
Locke to metaphysics undertook this service of bringing 
into the foreground the question of the origin and nature 
of knowledge. The discussion has shown its timeliness 
by being vigorously pushed ever since, approaching, with- 
out reaching, the end. On it depend the validity and 
limits of truth. Primitive mental terms had been ac- 
cepted from the time of Plato. Locke attacked them 
with such vigor as to make the question at once one of 
wide interest and import. He was able to secure the ac- 
ceptance, in empirical philosophy, of its first fundamental 
proposition, that the entire material of knowledge is de- 
rived from sensation ; that there is nothing in the under- 
standing which is not first in the sense — not derivatively, 
suggestively, but directly, as sensation. While his own 
analysis did not go very far in establishing this conclu- 
sion, it went far enough to prepare the way for those 
various and labored defences of it which have since been 
offered. 

. The attack of Locke on innate ideas served to clear 
away a good deal of rubbish, and open up the real point 



LOCKE. 213 

of difference between the two schools. The careless im- 
agery of ideas impressed upon the mind disappeared, and 
it became necessary, in defending the powers of mind, to 
define their action more carefully, to restrict with more 
searching analysis those ideas which are due to insight, 
and to state with more caution the conditions under 
which, and the manner in which, they are present. Re- 
mote and abstract truths could no longer be at once as- 
sumed as the primitive endowments of the mind. The 
chief result of this division of opinion so far has been 
increasing clearness along these lines of separation. 

The question of the origin of certain constructive- 
ideas still remains the initiative and determinative point 
of debate between empirical and intuitive philosophy. 
The one side maintains the assertion of Locke, that there 
is nothing in the understanding which is not first in the 
sense ; and the other still contends that the mind, by an 
insight deeper than that of the senses, fitting occasion 
being given, discerns, in their application, certain simple 
ideas which are the antecedent conditions of all rational 
knowledge. These ideas are distinguished from that 
large class which arises in experience as the fruit of 
generalization, by the absence of any sensuous, empirical 
quality, by an absolute identity of the idea with itself 
in every application of it, by its antecedent necessity to 
all experience which arises under it. Thus the notion of 
space, as contrasted with such an idea as that of sweet- 
ness, makes no appeal to the senses, gains no variety 
under experience, and is prior in thought to every rela- 
tion contained in it. 

The discussion has at length reached that point in 
which, all that is obscure and ambiguous in expression 
being removed, the conclusion is left to turn simply on 



214 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the mind's grasp of truth. Nor is it easy to believe that 
there would remain any diversity of opinion on the ques- 
tion itself, were it not for its many implications and the 
very different ways by which the mind approaches it. 

As was natural, Locke, in entering on so difficult an 
inquiry, involved himself in a good many inconsistencies, 
and was unable to measure the reach of his own affirma- 
tions. Thus, he recognized two kinds of qualities which 
pertain to objects : those, like size and hardness, which 
belong to the object itself, and those, like color and fla- 
vor, which belong to the mental sensibilities. But if the 
mind is blank paper, how can this distinction be main- 
tained ? A large share of external impressions are made 
by it to owe their form to the nature of the receptive 
power. The mind has then a nature of its own, which so 
unites with external qualities as to determine the charac- 
ter of the results. Moreover, those impressions referred 
exclusively to the object, as its shape and size, are not in 
the senses equivalents of that which they represent, but 
call for the most protracted and painstaking activity of 
mind to transform them from signs into the things signi- 
fied. We can no more read the world than we can read 
a book, by the senses alone. The distinction between 
primary and secondary qualities is, in an indirect way, 
that between intuitive and sensuous processes. The 
sense predominating, we have secondary qualities ; the f 
intuitive conception in the foreground, we have primary 
qualities. 

The topic is merely broached by Locke, not expounded. 
He has entered upon the field, but not captured it. He 
is involved everywhere in the inconsistencies of immature 
opinion. Thus, he accepts the notion of substance, and 
still regards it- of little import. Yet, in this notion is 



LOCKE. 215 

locked up that master-notion, causation. The empirical 
philosophy has had occasion to labor longest and most 
unsuccessfully in striving to regain that coherence of 
things and of thoughts which it has lost by putting the 
mere images of things and the sequence of things in 
place of the substratum of causal energies which sustain 
phenomena and bear them forward. The notion for 
which Locke found so little use is all that prevents the 
world from becoming to us the thinnest film of shifting 
appearances, through which the plummet of thought drops 
at once and is lost forever. 

Locke also put the being of God — with an easy defer- 
ence to the necessities of the case — among the verifiable 
truths of experience. But interpret experience as he 
would render it, on the sensuous side, and there is no 
idea which lies more wholly beyond it. He did not 
regard the immateriality of the soul as impossible, yet 
this truth is as directly involved in experience as the 
materiality of physical things. The two are correlatives 
in experience, resting on one and the same process of 
interpretation. The analysis which discriminates matter, 
discriminates it from mind in this very particular. The 
two antithetical conceptions define each other, define the 
physical and the spiritual. Space is the distinctive form- 
element in material things, and consciousness the distinc- 
tive form-element in mental things. This is the simplest 
and most universal distinction in experience. A thought, 
a feeling, have no space relations. That which sustains 
them is spirit. We know spirit in and through them, 
and in and through them alone. The difference between 
substance and spirit is this universal fact of experience ; 
the one yields qualities under space, the other activities 
under consciousness. To proceed, under this experience. 



2l6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

to say that the spirit may be material, is no more fit 
than to say that matter may be spiritual. Such an affir- 
mation is, having won the first terms of order, a renewal 
of the cry, Hurly burly. To suppose that what we put 
back of mental activity and call spirit can have other 
wholly unknown qualities of a material nature, is as 
beyond all reason as to suppose that things tasted and 
handled are, in the last analysis, impalpable. 

Locke, in common with the school he did so much to 
establish, shows this swimming of the eye, this loss in 
vision of the first, most palpable, most reliable distinc- 
tions of truth. He raised the question. Does matter 
think? Why not, pray, if the mind may be material? 
Can things fly? Why not, if flying is being hurled from 
a catapult ? Such methods are simply walking backward 
over the same ground we have traversed in moving for- 
ward. What should we gain in chemistry, having distin- 
guished hydrogen and oxygen from each other in a uni- 
form experience, by raising the question whether, after 
all, hydrogen may not have the qualities of oxygen, and 
oxygen those of hydrogen? The action of reason is thus 
like the elasticity of a rubber ball, which responds to 
the last impulse, while all traces of earlier influences dis- 
appear. 

It is the more worth while to make these criticisms, 
because they do not apply to Locke alone, but concern a 
method very general in the empirical school. The powers 
of mind are greatly restricted in mind where they are 
normal to experience, and are freely admitted in matter 
where they transcend experience. This philosophy con- 
sists very largely in obliterating the dividing lines be- 
tween matter and mind, and so wiping out the first and 
most fundamental truths of experience. Yet, in face of 



LOCKE. 217 

its break with experience, this philosophy still thinks 
itself empirical. 

Locke gave sufficient substance to his convictions to 
make them the germs of a school. The four ideas of 
agreement, relation, coexistence, and existence, by which 
he defined knowledge, passed into the single relation of 
agreement and disagreement. The association of ideas, 
which he was the first to enforce, became the one law of 
mind, and was readily based on the coherence of success- 
ive cerebral impressions. Thus, the simply mechanical 
and organic evolution of mind, which he initiated as a 
theory, only partially apprehending its implications, has 
gone bravely onward to the most extreme conclusions. 

We are to remember, in estimating a man like Locke, 
that he stood at the beginning, not at the end, of a move- 
ment. At its close, we chiefly see the directions in which 
it has miscarried, and the reasons why it should be super- 
seded. At its opening, the evils which it is to correct, 
the reasons which demand it, are in the foreground. The 
empirical tendency, which has brought with it, in all its 
history, great gains, was imperatively called for in the 
time of Locke as a defence against dogmatism and barren 
speculation, and as opening up new veins of inquiry. 
That it, in turn, should sink under its own excesses, was 
a matter of course. This fellowship of Locke with prog- 
ress, which led him to seek criteria of knowledge else- 
where than in the arbitrary assertions of men — a fault 
which so besets intuitionalism — is seen in his other works, 
often admirable in spirit and method ; his " Letters on 
Toleration," his '' Thoughts on Education," and his de- 
fence of the '^ Reasonableness of Christianity." The tem- 
per which ruled in him was a thoroughly liberal and 
progressive one. The sense of indebtedness rather than 



y^ 



21 8 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of disasters should be uppermost in our estimate of 
him. 

§ 5. Hartley (1704), a physician, made the second im- 
portant contribution to empirical philosophy. While 
Locke by no means measured the full sweep of his prin- 
ciples, and might readily have wished to withdraw from 
some of their results, it is none the less true that the con- 
viction which ruled him was a greatly reduced estimate of 
the powers of mind, and a correspondingly increased one 
of the powers of nature. This is shown in the position 
he gave to the association of ideas. The movement of 
thought was ceasing, in his conception of it, to be the 
incident of thought, and was becoming the more or less 
automatic product of the terms involved in it. As, how- 
ever, ideas are only transient states of mind, we cannot 
easily regard them, aside from the mind itself, as having 
any hold on each other, any power to order their own 
succession. We must either push the association of ideas 
farther, or drop back on the power of memory, of judg- 
ment, of imagination, as offering the only basis of the 
union of ideas. This second step in the development of 
empiricism was completed by Hartley. His attention, in 
harmony with the pursuits of his profession, was strongly 
directed to the brain, the organ of the mind. He regarded 

'^ sensations as the results of medullary vibrations. What 
we term ideas are impressions due to vibrations, which 
linger in the brain and return to it in the absence of the 
objects of sense. Sensory vibrations being repeated, tend 
to restore themselves, and to produce impressions allied 
to those of perception. This conclusion gives us the 

^second principle in empiricism. Mental impressions, in 
their simplest form, are the vestiges of sensations — sensa- 
tions that arise independently of their first occasions. By 



HARTLEY. 219 

this direct and complete dependence of mental states on 
the states of the brain, the way was prepared for sus- 
taining the law of association, independently of mental 
powers. Association of ideas rests on the connection 
of medullary vibrations with each other. These, renewed 
and repeated in a great variety of ways under a varied 
and growing experience, combine in numerous and com- 
plex methods, and so give occasion to general ideas, and 
to the orderly succession of ideas. Memory is the sequence 
of ideas dependent on repetition. It results simply 
from the previous presence of ideas, is the fruit of a 
law of nervous tissue. Judgment arises from the com-- 
bination of vibrations by agreement and disagreement. 
The mechanism of thought is involved in the implications 
of that infinitely susceptible and mobile material, the 
brain. Thus we are ready for the third assertion of em- 
piricism. The combinations of mental processes are pre- 
determined by the dependence of the medullary move- 
ments which give rise to them. As these are capable of 
an ever-growing complexity under fixed laws of produc- 
tion, all the subtile relations of thought find their causes 
in them. Hartley regarded those convictions which, on 
account of their certainty and universality, had been 
termed innate ideas, as the results of very early and very 
often repeated vibrations, which thus became an inescap- 
able habit of the brain. The objection, then, does not 
hold to innate ideas as innate ; this they are, but to them 
as products of mental power. What we term will, Hart- 
ley regarded simply as action following on an idea. The 
real connection lies in the dependence of states of brain 
on each other. The succession of mental states is like 
that of shadows, which chase each other on a screen. 
Following a logical order, this would be the sixth prin- 



220 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ciple in empiricism. The mental states we term volun- 

^ tary are the sequence of ideas and actions. The same 
causal relation, the dependence of successive states of 
brain on each other, rules in them as in the succession 
of thoughts and feelings. The foundations of empiricism 

"^were thus laid by Hartley, and built upon by him in all 
their principal parts. The mind, as a productive power, 
was abolished, and the brain put in its place. The 
vibrations of the nervous system were followed out in 
a method almost wholly hypothetical, and then made 
the valid forms of which thoughts are mysterious simu- 
lachres. 

§ 6. The conclusions of Hartley were supported by 
Priestley (1733), distinguished in physics and chemistiy. 

'^ He regarded mental processes as strictly dependent on 
the brain, and capable of being looked on as its functions. 
In consistency with this subordination of mental to 
physical phenomena, he thought the soul to be material. 
Yet we hardly see why we need to concede a soul If 
thoughts are functions of the brain. In one direction 
he helped forward the spiritualizing process. He looked 

"^ upon matter as an assemblage of forces, not as inert cen- 
tres. Matter itself was thus readily put into the hand of 
Supreme Power. 

Erasmus Darwin (173 1), also a physician and a success- 
ful botanist, followed in the same line of suggestion. 
Matter, as h-e thought, receives motion, spirit induces it. 

^ Life is the higher form of motion, and motion, through 
the organs of sense, gives Ideas. From these conclusions 
he passed readily on to the doctrines of Hartley. 

It is very observable that empiricism arose not merely 
in reaction against an unfruitful speculative tendency, a 
relation which in itself would readily carry it forward to 



HUME. 221 

an extreme position, but that it also owed its early devel- 
opment chiefly to those whose subjects and habits of 
inquiry were associated with the physical world. Dis--' 
ease, w^ith which the physician has to deal, is the product 
of material causes, and often involves the abnormal con- 
trol of the mind by them. The philosophy of these men 
was, as it were, a branch of pathology, a giving of univer- 
sality to the causes prominently active in mental disorder. 
As the instrument in its defects mars the mind, so in its 
perfections, it was inferred, it makes the mind. The con- 
trolling power lies on this side, not on that. An induction 
that starts with material phenomena, and thence extends 
to mental phenomena, is antecedently exposed to the 
same suspicion that attaches to inquiries that commence 
with mind and finish with physical relations. This sus-' 
picion, strong in itself, is greatly enhanced, if abnormal 
connections are made the type of normal ones. 

§ 7. The scepticism which is the inevitable outcome of 
empiricism, and which those who develop the philoso- 
phy may be slow to admit, was not long in making its 
appearance. David Hume (171 1) unfolded these doctrines ' 
thoroughly and unhesitatingly to the moral and religious 
conclusions involved in them. Hume dates an era in the 
history of philosophy, not by giving new views, but by ^ 
precipitating the empirical philosophy at once into all its 
disastrous results. He pushed it forward into a scepti- 
cism so complete, so overwhelming, so inevitable, that it 
was, and should have been regarded as, a reductio ad 
absiirdum of the entire system which gave rise to it. 
Hume's scepticism was very effective, but less effective 
than it, of right, should have been. It was only because 
men, having lost the path, find it again so slowly, that the 
road of empiricism, as a highway of philosophy, was not 



222 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

forever blocked by the ruins with which it was so thickly 
strewn by Hume. 

Hume was remarkable, not for sympathetic and con- 
^structive insight, but for that next inferior grade of power 
which expresses itself in a clear, rapid, remorseless devel- 
opment of data, till their true contents are wholly dis- 
closed. In this phase of endowment he has hardly had 
a superior. Nothing in his spiritual make-up deterred 
him from an unhesitating use of his keen, searching 
analysis. He rendered, though in a measure unintention- 
ally, a great service to philosophy, and one that would 
have been much greater if philosophy had had the power 
fully to avail itself of it. As it was, faith was as much 
stunned as instructed by the blow it had received, and 
slowly recovered its consciousness under many of its old 
forms of thought. The upshot of the philosophy of 
"^Hume was nihilism. Nihilism is suicide, and the philoso- 
phy that sinks into nihilism should find no hand to pluck 
it up again by its drowned locks. 

Nihilism is pure phenomenalism. The substances, 
energies, laws which underlie appearances and give them 
rational significance are all lost. We have everywhere a 
succession of changeable impressions, with no known 
origin or end, no measurement or determinate good. 
These phenomena shift among themselves under rela- 
tions that vary with every observer and every period, and 
have nowhere that fixed quality which is implied by truth. 
One reasons, but cannot defend his reasonings ; one be- 
lieves, but has no ground on which to justify his belief. 
He is the victim, wherever he turns, of illusions. Thus 
the search of Locke for the sources of knowledge was 
made by Hume to end in the conclusion, It has no 
sources the same for all, the same for any man under 



i 



HUME. 223 

changing circumstances. Let the babel of tongues pro- 
ceed ; it is a chronic insanity for which there is no rem- 
edy. One opinion has no advantage over another, except 
by virtue of the shifting impressions which for the mo- 
ment give it force. Empiricism, under the rapid evolu- 
tion of Hume, ended in a slough of impotency and unbe- 
lief as profound as, and wider than, that which received 
the Sophists. It called out, however, no Socrates. 

Hume says, ''After the most accurate and exact of my 
reasonings, I can give no reason why I should assent to 
it ; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider 
objects strongly in that view under which they appear to 
me. . . . The understanding, when it acts alone, 
and according to its most general principles, entirely 
subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of evi- 
dence in any proposition either in philosophy or com- 
mon life. . . . We have no choice left but between 
a false reason and none at all. . . . If I must ■ 
be a fool, as all those who reason or believe anything 
certainly are, my follies shall at least be natural and 
agreeable." Here we have absolute scepticism, with 
its last will and testament on its lips. Nothing is worth- 
while, unless it be self-indulgence. 

We can attach no value to these assertions of Hume. 
They are thoroughly self-destructive. If it be true that 
those who believe anything are certainly fools, then we 
have one important and valid proposition. But if we 
have reached one truth, why may we not more? The 
declaration destroys itself. We cannot maintain the 
distinction between a wise man and a fool, we cannot 
carry on the discussion, without conceding far more than 
Hume is willing to grant. Hume cannot accept his own 
philosophy, and attach any importance to its conclusions. 



224 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

True impotence, real incompetence, are left without any 
philosophy to rest on. The show of success in this 
theory of human faculties is achieved by first quietly, 
tacitly, conceding their validity, and then, on the ground 
of that validity, giving weight to the reasoning which 
overthrows it. 

Knowledge, with all its stores of truth, and wise, co- 
herent uses, remains, after such a criticism as this of 
Hume, precisely what it was before. No matter how 
often the lithe gymnast revolves in the air, he lands on 
his feet when he comes down. Call knowledge whatever 
we may choose to call it, its relations to man's life are not 
thereby altered. Scepticism cannot, from the nature of 
the case, move the world of truth, because it can secure 
no position outside of it. The most it can do is to cor- 
rect minor errors in the process itself of acquiring knowl- 

' edge. If men were not covetous of conjectures and 
ravenous of fears, not a tenth part of the importance 
would have attached to the speculations of Hume which 
has fallen to them. There would have rather been a 
sense of mirth at seeing a philosophy so badly shattered 
by its own explosion. 

This absurd scepticism is really in the philosophy, and 
its disclosure should, therefore, at once have destroyed it. 

^Hume accepted the principles of empiricism already cur- 
rent. Sense is the source of all mental impressions. 
Ideas are restored sensations. These ideas become more 
and more complex by combination under the processes 
in which they originate. To these he added the fourth 
dogma. That reasoning involves comparison only. It 
turns exclusively on the agreement and disagreement 
of impressions. These concur, and so strengthen each 
other ; or are diverse, and so weaken each other. The 



HUME. 225 

reasoning process thus becomes, under the interpretation 
of Hartley, the conjunction of harmonious vibrations. 

The fifth dogma which Hume emphasizes is, Belief is- 
the result of the liveliness of ideas. The idea that is mak- 
ing the strongest impression carries with it the state of 
mind we term belief. Belief is the mere fact of a predom- 
inant movement in the mind. To give any reason for 
it is simply allowing it to renew itself in a slightly varied 
form. It owes its force to conditions more or less 
changeable and accidental, and has no test beyond that 
of actuality. Belief is force declaring itself for the 
moment where it is, and as it is, by its own energy. 
Truth thus melts, like a snowflake, with its crystalline 
structure sinking in turbid waters, in the flow of meaning- 
less events. There is no longer any interpretation to a 
purely phenomenal world, among whose most infinitesimal 
occurrences are thoughts themselves. Under this view, 
" all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are de- 
rived from nothing but custom ; and belief is more prop- 
erly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative, part of 
our natures." Indeed, there remains no deep distinction 
between thought and feeling. Every state of mind is one 
induced in it, has authority while it lasts, and no author- 
ity beyond itself. 

This conclusion, sound within itself, ought to have 
ended the philosophy which brought it forth. Modern 
empiricism has no sufificient defence against it. It has 
resumed its old lines of movement, as if the denials of 
Hume had not fatally broken its connections; but it has 
won no real test of validity other than that of vividness 
of impression. It may go on to distinguish thoughts and 
feelings, as if they still possessed that diversity which we 
know to be in them, but reasoning yet remains a sensi- 

15 



225 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tive, rather than a cogitative, act. The empiricist may 
affirm the validity of thoughts, truths, because they are 
the products of real causes ; but it is the mind alone 
that can make that declaration in an authentic form. If 
this assertion is itself another impression among impres- 
sions, it does not help us to rise above impressions. 

It may be said that the intuitionalist must make the 
same appeal to conviction. Most truly, and he makes it, 
therefore, wisely, at the very beginning, and is not forced 
into it at the very end, in contradiction of all his pre- 
vious affirmations. He postulates powers of mind, and 
the validity of these powers, as antecedent condition of 
all truth. Thus only can truth be reached, and thus it is 
reached from the outset. We must carry it with us, or 
we shall not win it. Start in subjection to sensation, and, 
like Hume, we shall end by being the slaves of sensa- 
tions. 

*' Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 

The scepticism of Hume gave occasion, both in Ger- 
many and in Scotland, to new forms of philosophy. In 
England, however, it did not suffice to break the flow 
of empiricism. So far, at least, this philosophy proved 
itself ; for the English mind moved on, against reason, 
under the dominant impression which custom had fast- 
ened on it. Empiricism, under the quiet assumption of 
causation, ceasing also to distinguish the connection of 
events from those of thoughts, held on its way. It could 
hardly have done this had there not still remained many 
truths, on the physical and physiological side, which 
needed to be incorporated into psychology, and were 
ready to reward and stimulate its inquiries. It was the 
strength of the scientific movement, with which empirical 



HUME. 227 

philosophy affiliated, that enabled it to rally. This, and 
the subordinate truths of which we have spoken, helped 
it to survive its coup de grace. The scientific temper, 
though at bottom at one with a sounder philosophy, 
takes on a hasty and superficial union with empiricism, 
seeking to establish causal relations in the realm of mind, 
and so to extend the victories of science, in their first and 
simplest form, over this last and widest field of thought. 

Hume affords an example of what is common in phi-, 
losophy, the unexpected union of extremes. One would 
say that the general drift of his doctrine was materialistic 
— so materialistic that he had sunk all the processes of 
thought in the progress of things. Yet, as he regarded 
the impressions of space and of time as contained in the 
forms of sensation, and causation in its order ; and as 
sensations are shut up within themselves, he was on the 
verge of idealism — the idealism which Kant was the means 
of developing. Having reached this position by a move- 
ment empirical and materialistic in its form, the mind is 
compelled to complete it in a speculative and idealistic 
fashion. Having denied the power of the mind to appre- 
hend space as a valid form -element, it and all the phe- 
nomena it encloses become pure, subjective impressions, 
to be traced only in the intricacies of the mind's own 
meanderings. Philosophy becomes thus like a stork, 
which stands upon one leg till it becomes wholly weary, 
and then composedly takes it up and puts down the other. 
We can retain neither mind nor matter, in their true com- 
plement of powers, without retaining them both. Turn 
wholly to one or the other, and we find ourselves shortly 
driven to a conclusion the reverse of that with which we 
started. Mind is first blank paper, and then it is the 
total record of the entire universe, it is the universe. 



228 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Hume regarded any real nexus in causation as wholly 
beyond our knowledge. The force of sequences is due to 
the anticipation of them begotten in the mind by habit. 
He failed to see that habit itself involves causation. Im- 
pressions must have causal power in the formation of 
habit. Habit is the result, the effect, of previous action. 
In the absence of all causes, we are thrown wholly back 
on the liveliness of ideas as the test of truth. Or, rather, 
the two are one and the same thing. We cannot distin- 
guish truth from liveliness, and ground it in it as a cause 
or reason. The whole notion of reason or connection has 
been lost. 

The denial of Hume which occasioned the most imme- 
^ diate flutter in the practical and religious mind was that 
of miracles. Many insufficient ways were found of an- 
swering it. So universal was the empirical tendency in 
England, that few understood how disastrous were the 
blows which faith was receiving, or saw any way of ward- 
ing them off. The replies were generally makeshifts, that 
failed to fathom the argument of Hume, and did not see 
their way to that rectification of the lines of thought 
which the case demanded. If our beliefs are solely the 
results of experience, the uniformities of nature, Hume 
reasoned, being as a million to one, must have an insu- 
perable advantage in power of impression over any mira- 
cle. It is idle to suppose that miracles, few, remote, scat- 
tered, should overbear in force, in liveliness, the fixed 
order of events. A man cannot make a path by once 
crossing a meadow. The new-comer will pursue the old 
way, trodden by the feet of successive generations. The 
empirical philosophy admits no antecedent, rational pre- 
sumptions preparing the way for one or another assertion, 
and making the mind ready of belief. The conclusions of 



i 



HUME. 229 

the moment are simply the result of a balance of forces, 
and this balance must, from the nature of the case, be 
immensely against the miracle. The law has been deep- 
ened in its impressions by a thousand examples, the mira- 
cle by one only. A single fact cannot, in the physical 
realm, put to flight a thousand, whatever may be done 
in the spiritual kingdom. Belief is merely an addition 
of forces, and cannot be commanded by sporadic events. 
This method of reasoning is so diverse from that current' 
among men, that few empiricists, even, fully grasped it. 
Theologians, accustomed to disguise from themselves 
other methods of thought under empirical terminolog}^ 
met with great difficulty in approaching the argument, 
and often answered it in a very slight and insufficient 
way. The scepticism should have disclosed at once the'' 
inadequacy of the philosophy which sustained it. The 
mind is full of rational anticipations, which make some 
things easy, others difficult, of proof, quite aside either 
from the inertia or the momentum of experience. In- 
deed, this inertia and this momentum are opposed influ- 
ences to reason, and, like the idola of Bacon, are to be 
resisted. The theologian said with surprise. This doctrine 
of Hume would not allow me to trust my own senses. 
Certainly not, if your senses begin suddenly to take on 
new and irregular forms. Under this changeableness, 
the sense of reality would disappear, as it does in a 
dream. The spectator of a miracle would, under the 
empirical philosophy, be in the condition of a man who 
had successfully used a complicated machine without 
understanding its structure, if the machine should sud- 
denly become entirely uncertain in its performance. He 
could only say. Something is wrong. What it is I do not 
know. The absurdity lies in a philosophy which so sub- 



230 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

jects the far-reaching anticipatory mind of man to physi- 
cal connections that it can bring to them no forecast 
whatever, nothing but simple passivity. 

Yet the nihilism of Hume should have subverted his 
refutation of miracles, in common with all his other con- 
clusions. If the belief in a miracle makes a lively impres- 
"^ sion on any mind, as it certainly does on some minds, 
then that belief is adequate. The question is one simply 
of facts, of what is, not of what should be. We are not 
to inquire whether a flood is probable, but to look out of 
doors and see whether it is actual. If it is, that very fact 
is its reason of being. Absurdities have exactly the same 
rights in this philosophy as things rational, if they once 
succeed in coming into existence. Indeed, the distinction 
between that which is absurd and that which is worthy of 
belief has been lost, swallowed up in the distinction be- 
tween that which is and that which is not. Hume regains 
the use of his rational powers when he wishes to attack 
belief, and the believer allows him to play this double 
part. He is in the light of reason or out of it, as suits his 
purpose. 

^ Almost any doctrine contains some truth. It is this 
which buoys it up. We are to remember this fact in a 
criticism of Hume. There is almost universally present 
in thought an irrational inertia. Hume makes this, in- 
stead of a conflicting tendency, the very substance of 
thought. An example of this inertia is offered at the 
present time, in the unqualified way in which we reject 
the supernatural. There has been a change, induced by 
science, in the customary methods of thought, and this 
change gains a force beyond the reasons which sustain it. 
It offers a weight over against the weight of previous 
methods. Few minds can discuss the questions involved 



JAMES MILL. 231 

in the supernatural without a sensible bias. Pure reason 
is constantly interfered with by inertia and by momen- 
tum, forces which Hume would make the very centre of 
rational movement. These are really due to the tena- 
cious interests which lay hold of life, and the limited 
area it looks out on. It misses, in part, the largeness 
and liberty of truth. Reason is more or less arrested in 
its functions, and displaced by the swing of feeling, 
as a careening vessel is swamped by its own movable 
ballast. 

PART II. 

THE LATER EMPIRICAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 8. Empiricism recovered quickly from the scepticism 
of Hume, like a prosperous city from a conflagration. 
Yet, like a careless city, it made no adequate provision in 
its reconstruction against a repetition of the disaster. It 
retained its hidden physical connections, though it dis- 
guised them a little more carefully under psychological 
expressions. If the scepticism of Hume had been less 
sweeping it might have been more effective. As it 
pulled down all knowledge, practically, men could pay 
no attention to it ; and, theoretically, they were less im- 
pressed by it. The conviction was instant and inevitable, 
that there was some profound error in it. Men went on 
in their constructions very much as if the riddle had not 
been propounded to them. 

James ]\Iill (1773,) of IMontrose, Scotland, without es- 
sentially enlarging the data of empirical philosophy, gave 
them a thorough restatement. He helped, also, to fasten 
an empirical bias on the mind of his son, John Stuart 



232 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Mill, from which, in spite of all his philanthropy and 
^ vigor of thought, he never escaped. One is perhaps 
justified in regarding the younger Mill as not altogether 
satisfied with his philosophy, and holding fast to it only 
in the absence of any convictions which seemed to him 
more tenable. His mind could not relieve itself from a 
life-long method. The philosophy of both father and son 
was associated with social theories and civic interests 
which helped to make it inflexible. 

■" James Mill, in his '^ Analysis of the Phenomena of the 
Human Mind," gave a full and carefully guarded state- 
ment of empirical psychology. He escapes the repulsive 
force of its materialistic features by expressing the 
connections of mind in terms of mind, rather than in 
the terms of the nervous system. Yet the underlying 
grounds are not different from those offered by Hartley. 
In the construction of complex ideas he lays strong 
emphasis on inseparable association. Processes of thought 
^ that are often repeated together are so merged in each 
other as not to be distinguishable from a simple state. 
This is a fact of great moment in mental analysis. The 
use which Mill makes of it is to be objected to only 
because of the mechanical character imparted by means 
of it to the highest mental action. That action is not a 
growth in celerity of insight, but a lapse into an abbrevi- 
ated, automatic action ; a thing of facile connections and 
not of facile- thoughts. Mill presents, in a striking way, 
"^what has since been so characteristic of the school, a 
careful rendering of psychological forms, with a steady 
elimination of those forces which alone impart to them 
any significance. The meaning is made to consist in the 
very words which present it. The inner movement of 
mind, on its phenomenal side, stands for mental powers. 



JAMES MILL. 233 

Phenomenalism, without being affirmed as a truth, is all 
that is offered. Sequences are causes, and a statement 
of the order of events is their exposition. Philosophy 
is descriptive. Mill was a strict nominalist. A general 
term is a word that calls up many objects. The inner 
procedure of the mind, in reaching this result, is thus 
covered up by the result itself, inadequately stated. 
Again, Mill regarded the qualities of an object and the 
object itself as identical. Successions which are constant 
are not the indices of causes, they are the causes, all that 
we are at liberty to understand by causes. The notion 
of the infinite is simply the conception of the possibility 
of indefinite extension, as of a line or of a surface. The 
phenomena of mind were consistently cut down in scope 
to their alleged sources. The absolute passivity of mind 
under its impressions is seen in the assertions, " To know 
a sensation and to have a sensation is the same thing." 
" To have unlike sensations is to know unlike sensations." 
Every sensation does, indeed, involve consciousness, 
and this fact gives color to the assertion of Mr. Mill ; 
but, sensations being, granted as phenomena, the entire 
action of the mind in considering, expounding, and com- 
bining them remains to be considered. This action is 
either left out by Air. Mill, or something very different 
from it put in its place. To describe the processes of con- 
sciousness, even if the description were complete — and 
the description in hand is very incomplete — is not philos- 
ophy. If it were philosophy, life itself would be the per- 
fection of philosophy. What Mr. ]\Iill constantly omits 
is the gist of the whole matter, the rational impulse in- 
volved in the movement. If there are no underlying 
powers and causes and reasons, we are back at once on 
phenomenalism. Mr. Mill escapes nihilism by ignoring it, 



234 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

and adhering to his descriptive processes. His language 
implies causation and the coherence of mental processes 
in personal power. These connections are so essential to 
every rational movement, that the thoughts of our phi- 
losopher are united by them for him and for us, even 
though they find no recognition in a theoretical statement 
of belief. If mental facts did succeed each other in con- 
sciousness in the manner Indicated by Mr. Mill, their prog- 
ress would be wholly automatic. Involving by no possibil- 
ity any oversight of them, or rational inquiry instituted 
by the mind itself concerning them. Philosophy, at least, 
must prepare the way for philosophy by recognizing the 
bent of the mind toward it. The succession of impres- 
sions in the experience of an animal, a purely imaginative 
flow of ideas, should be, under this system, the most per- 
fect type of rational being. Did not Mr. Mill's philoso- 
phy involve every moment more than he explains, to wit, 
the motives and methods of explanation itself, it would 
be brought to an instant close. Empiricism quietly in- 
sists on the diligent delineation of the branches of a tree, 
whose roots It has cut up. It denies the powers of mind 
for theoretical ends, and gives them constant employment 
for practical ones. It is able to do this with easy over- 
sight of the fact, by those who construct and those who 
accept the philosophy, because language — language which 
grows up in the midst of human experience, as men spon- 
taneously Interpret It — is so saturated with all causal and 
voluntary relations as to bear them Inevitably with it In 
every affirmation. The assertions of the philosophy co- 
here by an attraction of the words for each other which 
is the inherent force of our common reason in them. 

Empiricism, by its diligent pursuit of phenomena, has 
done much to correct philosophy and enlarge its data. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 235 

It has been worth all the ingenuity and activity it has 
developed. As a philosophy, however, no iridescent film- 
of thought has ever been thinner, more unable to express 
or control the forces that surge beneath it. The spirit of 
the wheels is not in the wheels. The sign is here, but not 
the thing signified — this plays remote in a spiritual realm. 

§ 9. John Stuart j\lill (1806) was a man of ample pow- 
ers, sustained by wide and pure sympathies. The em- 
pirical philosophy especially commended itself to him 
on its ethical and practical side. Intuitionalism, often 
assuming conventional forms, was easily associated with 
an unprogressive and dogmatic temper. It was quite 
possible, therefore, that one so earnest and beneficent as 
John Stuart Mill, trained as he had been from his ear- 
liest youth in this system, should find something very 
attractive in the fresh, ethical spirit which inspired empir- 
icism. A philosophy that is breaking with old methods 
always offers, for the time being, a ready opportunity 
for attacking abuses, and uncovering the weaknesses of 
conventional thought. The intuitionalism which Mill 
had to encounter was often of a very indolent and illogi- 
cal order. 

There was little in Mill of absolute and unequivocal 
assertion. He seemed rather to accept empiricism as 
offering fewer difficulties than other systems, than be- 
cause he found no difficulties in it. His chief addition to 
its sum of beliefs was its seventh principle. All logic is 
inductive. This follows directly from the general line 
of its beliefs, and yet was an assertion difficult to 
make and defend in the presence of a universally cur- 
rent deductive logic. In his " System of Logic " he gave 
the scope and methods of induction exhaustive state- 
ment. The work was one of great value. He regarded 



236 ' ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the axioms of mathematics as ultimately truths of obser- 
vation, though they have now been wrought into our ex- 
perience as indisputable facts by inseparable association. 
The deductive logic in which we affirm of each one of a 
class what is true of the class is merely a restatement of 
knowledge already won in the slow growth of induction. 
-Induction prepares the way for deduction. We reason 
from individual to individual. An individual has a given 
attribute, another individual resembles it in all other at- 
tributes ; it resembles it also, we infer, in the given attri- 
bute. This succession of thought contains, in its simplest 
form, the entire inductive growth of knowledge. All 
later processes of deduction are following backward this 
path by which we have advanced. 

If this were an adequate explanation of reasoning, there 
would be no reasoning in the ordinary sense of the word 
— a process of thought which furnishes proof. On what 
ground do we expect that the same substance will show 
like qualities at different times, or that substances like 
in all observed particulars will be like in others ? We 
have, in empiricism, nothing but fixed association as the 
ground of such an anticipation. Association has no 
rational basis deeper than itself ; its force is of an instinc- 
tive character, for which we can render no reason. Rea- 
son we have none, and so reasoning disappears. Our 
logic has spoiled all logic. We must at least recognize the 
validity of causation before the coherence of facts is ex- 
plicable, and before we can see why this coherence should 
reproduce itself as a fixed association in our conception 
of them. We are, therefore, instantly launched, if we 
are to reason at all, if we are to offer any, the very least, 
exposition of experience, on the a priori inquiries which 
concern causation in common with all necessary connec- 



JOHN STUART MILL. 237 

tions. Does not the very notion of reasoning, if we retain 
the word in its ordinary- force — and if we do not, we can- 
not reprieve logic from the general overthrow — involve 
this insight ? A reason is a conviction of mind, which 
satisfies it as to some assertion. The following of one 
event on another is not reasoning, nor is the watching of 
such a succession. Reasoning offers some consideration 
to the mind, which determines for it this sequence, ^lill 
resolves all reasoning into an empirical knowledge of 
the sequence itself. This is only the raw material, the 
suggestion of knowledge. A reason, when it offers itself 
as a reason, can only be a conviction of mind involving a 
second conviction. Sensations following sensations, ideas 
pursuing ideas, are not reasoning. In these, we are mere 
spectators of experience. Induction as fixed association 
is experience, not exposition ; so long as we are learning 
attributes and the manner in which they are grouped, we 
are not reasoning. If we begin to reason by making 
certain attributes the ground of anticipating other attri- 
butes, we are either thrown back on instinctive connec- 
tions for which we can give no reason, and which in turn 
can give us no reason, we are thrown back on the simple 
facts themselves, or we must bring forward explanatory 
notions, notions like that of causation, which give to the 
mind a coherence of events and of thoughts. There is 
no possibility of rising out of sensuous experience into its 
rational rendering without giving the process a spring 
beyond itself. We are left by ]\Iill in the confusion of 
confounding the fact with the reasons of the fact. 

This is clearly seen in the canons of inductive logic 
which i\Iill so wisely and carefully sets up. Take the 
first one, that of agreement. If two or more instances of 
the phenomena under investigation have only one cir- 



238 - ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

cumstance in common, the circumstance in which all 
instances agree is the cause or effect of the given phe- 
nomena. How do we see the fitness of this canon? Cer- 
tainly not by experience merely, since it is brought for- 
ward to expound experience. If it is itself a constituent 
of experience, then experience needs no exposition. The 
canon owes its force to the insight of reason. This canon 
and every other canon on which induction depends are 
simply self-evident statements of truth, brought to the 
intellectual illumination of experience. No inductive 
process can be lighted up in any other way than by as- 
sertions due to insight. Insight is precisely that which 
we are in search of. The experience, as experience, is 
complete in itself, and now we wish to understand it. 
Mill's conception that experience slowly expounds itself 
is virtually the assertion that it is never expounded. 
Connections of fixed association are, in every stage of 
them, equally opaque. The axioms of mathematics must 
be seen — seen through — and not till they are seen do 
they explain anything. An experience that occurs under 
them does not expound them, they expound it. A clear 
expository power must attach to fundamental principles, 
and it may just as well attach now, in our immediate 
use of them, as to attach at any previous period and be 
transmitted by inseparable association. Nay, it must at- 
tach to every use of them, or they fail of their purpose. 
We do not see by the light a lamp has yielded, but by 
that which it is yielding. When the canons of induction 
are first brought forward, the clear light that is due to 
their distinct statement is not the product of the more 
obscure light which belonged to them, when tacitly ac- 
cepted in the individual cases which came under them ; 
but to the fact that the connections of reason are now 



JOHN STUART MILL. 239 

distinctly indicated in them. The growth of thought is 
not the resting back, by virtue of fixed associations, of 
the connections of thought on instinctive ties, but the 
rise of these processes of reason out of the obscurity of 
use into the clear statement of general truth. Insight is 
gaining ground on instinct, not instinct confirming itself 
by repetition. This process Mill exemplified in his in- 
ductive logic. He brought its several canons into clear 
vision, as the intuitive convictions on which its processes 
rest. The mind is thus led to see for itself, guided by 
the notion of causation, that the facts so stated involve, 
under the canons, the conclusion associated with them. 
That by which induction is justified to itself is, and ever 
must be, insight. The canons of induction are neces- 
sarily deductive. Mill put back of his great work that- 
which the work was intended to disprove. 

We can interpret the facts of experience by ideas which 
the mind, in its own insight, brings, as the axioms of 
mathematics ; or we may interpret them by ideas which 
have been established by previous induction. The sec- 
ond method gives us that form of deduction in which we 
reason from the class to the individuals contained under 
it. We thus spread out in particulars the knowledge we 
have accumulated in generals. The process of exposi- 
tion cannot, it is true, be opened by this form of deduc- 
tion, since it involves previous induction. The very first 
terms of knowledge, the earliest steps of reasoning, are 
possible only in connection with those primitive insights 
for which we look exclusively to the reason. Without 
these there can be no opening of the processes of thought. 
We must again insist that empiricism uniformly destroys 
itself in reaching its last results. If all logic is inductive, 
there is no logic ; as the association of attributes is not a 



240 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

matter of logic, but of a purely sensuous experience. 
That step which is a rational step, a stride of mind, is 
always deductive, even when it is prepared for by induc- 
tion. The connections which pervade induction and give 
it intellectual force are deductive. The idea of causation 
"involves not only that the same cause will be followed by 
the same effect, but that similar causes will produce simi- 
lar effects ; and so the mind gains reasons, though of 
unequal force, through all the variable connections of re- 
semblance. 

Mill held a midway position between materialistic and 
idealistic tendencies. Both elements met in his system. 
Materialism is a term in ill odor and of variable force. 
We may well, therefore, be called on to use it cautiously 
and with careful definition. Rarely is any philosophy, 
especially any English philosophy, consistently material- 
^ istic. Idealism is more frequently and more readily con- 
ceded. It does not involve the same humiliation of the 
mind. Strict materialism covers the assertion that men- 
tal phenomena are the direct expression of physical causes, 
that physical and mental forces have one nature and one 
source. Without going so far as this, a system may be 
materialistic in its methods. It may identify the depend- 
encies of mind with those of matter, and bring the two 
classes of phenomena under one law, that of causation. 
This is a result as subversive of the true character of 
mental powers as is their identification with physical 
attributes. If these phenomena are identical in the laws 
which govern them, the inference is almost inevitable 
that they are one in origin. We know nothing about 
substances, and have no interest in them, beyond the 
agreements they present in their modes of action. Phe- 
nomena whose laws are the same express thereby similar- 



JOHN STUART MILL. 241 

ity of substance. When we say of a philosophy, as of 
that of Spencer, that it is materialistic, we may simply 
mean that its reductions of mental phenomena are made 
on the basis of causal relations, relations which character- 
ize the physical world. 

It is not uncommon for one fully under the influence of 
this fundamental method of materialism to approach, as 
did Mill, very close to idealism in his ultimate assertions 
of the forms of being. He regarded the world of sensa- 
tions, with the mental constructions which follow upon 
it, as that which we alone know. The external world is 
to us simply '' a permanent possibility" of these experi- 
ences. Having put the powers and laws of mind in the 
closest dependence on those of matter, he is not able to 
find in the mind strength enough to grasp with certainty 
these verj' things that give to it its own order of being. 
If the mind is robbed of its true endowments, we may be 
landed in an idealism of sheer weakness, an idealism that 
cannot assert the origin of its own impressions. 

The hesitancy of ^Mill's philosophy is remarkable, and 
has extended somewhat to the empiricism that accom- 
panied and followed it. He admits causation, yet finds 
no sufficient reference for it. He is ready to identify it 
with succession, yet uses it as if it retained its own char- 
acter. His first inductive canon, already given, can mean 
nothing under mere succession. Its entire purpose is to 
turn a succession into proof of causation. What can 
"the permanent possibility of sensation"' stand for other 
than a permanent cause of sensation? But a permanent 
cause involves at once an external world, which he yet 
regards as beyond proof. He is thus constantly using 
causation as a valid notion, and yet refusing to it the posi- 
tion that is properly its own in a system of speculation. 
16 



242 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

While we have, according to Mill, no ground but a 
limited experience on which to affirm the universal pres- 
ence of causation, even in physical things, he still be- 
lieves that it applies in the same thorough way to human 
action. A little scrap of conviction, the product of habit, 
and mutilated within itself, is thus made the archetype 
of the universe. One is deeply impressed, in Mill, by the 
astuteness of a conscientious mind groping its way out- 
ward, and forever baffled by a congenital weakness it 
cannot shake off. The processes of disintegration are 
always a little in advance of those of integration, and no 
worthy and beautiful body of belief is built up. 

The manner in which causation, the constructive no- 
tion of the physical world, is handled, goes far to deter- 
mine the character of a philosophy. Empiricism, while 
emasculating it in its own field of things, struggles to win 
for it universal force. There are two essentials to the 
integrity of intellectual phenomena, that we characterize 
them exclusively by their own form-element, conscious- 
ness ; and that we unite them under their own laws, the 
thoughts under the law of truth, a connection in rational 
vision. This law stands in no dependence on causation. 
The two are inconsistent with each other, and supersede 
each other. Effects are all equally valid. No distinction 
of correct or incorrect, true or false, obtains between 
them. If, therefore, our opinions are effects, they are 
equally reat — we cannot properly say sound — one with 
another. The falling of a rock is not true or untrue, as 
compared with the overthrow of a tree. If what the 
empiricist affirms were true, in his sense of the word, it 
would cease to be either true or untrue in any fitting use 
of words. Each event, whether in the world we call phys- 
ical or in that we term mental, would simply be a fact — 



ALEXANDER BAIN. 243 

neither more nor less — with other facts. This obstacle 
in the path of empiricism is so absolute that it is a waste 
of time to add any other to it. A system that destroys 
the nature of truth cannot profitably be subjected to the 
tests of truth. In whatever direction empiricism takes 
its course, it shortly encounters a gulf it cannot bridge. 
Attacking liberty, it must also attack the spontaneity 
of thought, the construction of thought, under its own 
visible law of truth. But losing this, it loses truth itself, 
and with it all rational grounds of controversy. Let the 
thoughts of Mr. Mill follow each other like the waters of 
a mountain brook till they gather at any lower level what- 
ever, and they have nothing to do with, and stand in no 
contradiction of, the thoughts of another philosopher, 
spreading out, like a distinct stream, another mirror in 
another direction to the world about him. Every conclu- 
sion, as every event, is fully established, whether it be 
one affirming necessity or affirming liberty, by the simple 
fact of its existence. 

§ 10. Alexander Bain, professor at Aberdeen, has writ- 
ten voluminously in defence of empiricism. While he 
shows the same hesitancy as Mill in reaching the last 
conclusions involved in his philosophy, his method of 
presentation is much more positive. Mill hesitated to 
resolve the mind into a succession of phenomena ; he 
hesitated to refer all states and actions to ourselves — this 
self a series, this series so strange a one that it is ever 
taking into itself inferences as to its own nature ; he 
naturally hesitated, under the mere force of an impres- 
sion, to sweep away all the impressions the world has 
been accumulating up to the present moment. Professor 
Bain does not stumble over these long leaps. He takes 
them without reluctance, with more boldness and less 



244 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

insight. Having failed to accept the interpreting power 
of reason, he cannot restore the connections of sensations 
with that which they represent. The mind is enclosed 
hopelessly within its own impressions. The sentence is 
to be rendered, but it is to be rendered by merely seeing 
the words. Everything is relative, with a relativity the 
mind can in no way measure or escape. In the degree in 
which the mind commences in helplessness, does it end in 
helplessness. Empiricism opens with the affirmation, all 
knowledge starts in sensation ; and it closes with the 
affirmation, all knowledge ends in sensation. At the out- 
set, sensations were the images of physical facts cast on 
the mental screen ; and at the close, this much of truth is 
lost, and the la^t conclusion is that these images are so 
tinctured with local color that we can affirm nothing cer- 
tainly about them. We lost the mind in our earlier asser- 
tion, and now we have lost the external world in our later 
assertion. The only real result is that which Hume di- 
vined so quickly and so justly, phenomenalism. 

Professor Bain has made valuable contributions to the 
data of philosophy. These lie chiefly in the direction of 
physiological facts that touch psychology, facts which 
bear on perception and the methods of mental action. 
If these physical relations seem to cast a dark, material- 
istic shadow on the connections of mind, it is because of 
the way the light is made to fall upon them. Shift the 
light, and immediately we stand on the bright heaven- 
ward side of spiritual phenomena. 

§ II. The advocate of empiricism whose works are 
most voluminous and influential is Herbert Spencer. 
There are an elaborateness, clearness, and breadth of 
presentation in Spencer, which overawe the mind and 
crush it under an avalanche of considerations. Yet few 



HERBERT SPENCER. 245 

philosophical speculations are more thoroughly illusory, 
are wider apart in the impressions which they make and 
the naked facts for which they stand, than those of Spen- 
cer. This constant glinting of light, which, after all, can- 
not be found, arises from the fact that he uses words 
familiar to us, words which we are clothing with their 
usual force, and yet which have, of right, in his system, a 
much more restricted meaning. A process essentially 
physical is described as if it were truly intellectual. 

The psychology of Spencer reposes on the same basis 
as that of Hartley. It is expanded, however, in connec- 
tion with the doctrine of evolution, wholly beyond the 
history of the individual. The growth of the race and of 
life universal are among its resources. The scope and 
complexity of the processes of combination are thus in- 
definitely enhanced, and the means of explanation cor- 
respondingly multiplied and made correspondingly vague. 

Intelligence consists, according to Spencer, in the estab- 
lishment of correspondences between relations in the 
organism and relations in the environment, and the devel- 
opment of intelligence is the progress of this correspond- 
ence. The powers of mind, so-called, reason, memory, 
imagination, are portions of this correlation, special forms 
under which it takes effect. The fundamental law of this 
development, a law resting on the nervous system, is that 
two psychical states that have been once united in expe- 
rience tend to evoke each other. Under this simple prin- 
ciple, whose ultimate ground is found in the properties of 
matter, the world addresses itself to the sensitive organ- 
ism, the organism responds to the world. This inter- 
action, in its less complete expression, is organic life ; 
in its more com.plete expression, is intelligence. Those 
ideas which are most distinctive of intelligence, the pri- 



246 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

mary terms of reason, are long-established connections, 
from which the mind has wholly ceased to depart. They 
are the great waterways of thought, which mark out the 
territory of mind, and indicate its permanent lines of dec- 
lination. With great assiduity and abundant illustration, 
that seem to confirm these conclusions, Spencer holds on 
his endless way through devious lines of evolution. A sys- 
tem of this sort may have interest and instruction in its ' 
details, but must, as a philosophy, be pronounced upon 
collectively. Does it cover the facts to be expounded, or 
is it so far aside from them as to make its correspondences 
illusions? We cannot answer this question by entangling 
ourselves in particulars, but must rather strive to deter- 
mine whether that which is offered as intelligence is intel- 
ligence, whether the phenomena discussed and those call- 
ing for discussion are identical. All extreme systems, 
whether materialistic or idealistic, are condemned, not on 
the ground of particular failures, but for a want of gen- 
eral conformity to the great outlines of human experience. 
They tell us from their own speculative resources what 
knowledge is, rather than strengthen our hold upon it 
as already the common possession of men. If this first 
incompatibility of an extreme philosophy can be over- | 
looked, it is not surprising that secondary failures are 
readily condoned. Empiricism has this grave advantage 
also, that it is always dealing with a series of sensuous 
facts, often "throws much light upon them, and unites 
them, in a more or less solid way, with the stratum of 
psychological phenomena which lies above them. It 
thus gains an anchorage, with a corresponding sense of 
reality and security. 

Intelligence was defined for us long before the philoso- 
phy of Mr. Spencer, by the accumulated experience of 



HERBERT SPENCER. 24/ 

the race. The fundamental objection which we take to 
this system Is, that that which it accepts as intelligence 
does not agree with that which we know by that name. 
The correlations which lie between living things and the 
things which enclose them are very many, and have 
steadily increased under that movement known as evolu- 
tion. But these correspondences are exceedingly diverse 
as well as manifold. Mr. Spencer has laid hold of certain 
midway phenomena In this development, to which his 
method Is in a measure applicable, and has made these 
stand for facts above and below them. What we know 
as habit Is largely a better response, and a more Intricate 
one, of the nervous and muscular systems to stimuli 
through repeated action. Complicated correspondences 
are Induced, and there arise, as active habits, various 
forms of skill ; and, as passive habits, a more quiet re- 
sponse to our situation. This men have recognized, but 
they have just as distinctly seen that habits are not intel- 
ligence ; that intelligence is rather opposed to habit, and 
far superior to it. Habits, correlations Induced In the 
nervous system, are not to be passed upon us as Insights 
and sound conclusions of thought, any more than copper 
is to be received as silver because they are both parts of 
one currency. Habit and intelligence are distinctly dif- 
ferent. In the degree in which an act has become a habit, 
has it ceased to be one of Intelligence ; In the measure In 
which it Is enclosed in the automatic action of the ner- 
vous system has It passed from the field of consciousness. 
Intelligence is most distinct and positive when It first 
declares itself. The later correspondences induced by it 
dim, rather than enhance, its brilliancy. This defect In 
the system of Mr. Spencer is well seen in the explanation 
offered by him of intuitive ideas. If they are the remain- 



248 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ders of mental habits, incident to our early experience, 
they should be among the most instinctive and obscure 
connections of action ; they are among the most declared 
and clear connections of thought ; they are knowledge, 
not organic drift, in its most pronounced form. Take the 
theories of mathematics ; the mind pushes them with the 
most fresh, intense, and clear conviction, in directions 
new to the individual and to the race. Iron and incan- 
descent iron are not so distinct from each other as a cohe- 
sion of impressions by virtue of the organic force of the 
nervous system, and a luminous outlook of mind, pliant 
to new truth. In the measure in which we are dealing 
with intelligence, are the theories of Mr. Spencer inappli- 
cable. Intelligence, as the self-guided movement of mind, 
is a thing so transcendent, and, of its own order, so supreme 
in human life, that no man, aside from the compelling 
force of a theory, can confound it with the processes 
which lie below it, and prepare the way for it. 

Mr. Spencer is able to multiply the number of facts 
which he brings under association by slurring mental 
powers. Nervous states are doubtless organically asso- 
ciated within themselves; but it remains, by the entire 
breadth of the assertion, to be shown that intellectual 
connections are the incidents of these physical depend- 
encies. This supposition, fundamental to this philos- 
ophy, is not to be assumed, but to be most thoroughly 
established. Memory cannot be the return of previous 
experiences simply ; yet this is all that we can refer to 
the automatic action of the nervous system. Rational 
memory — memory as associated with the rational render- 
ings of the mind as opposed to the sensuous repetitions 
of impressions in the animal system — involves a higher 
act by which present experiences are perceived in definite 



HERBERT SPENCER. 249 

relation to past ones. Recapitulation is not memory. 
But if we accept memory as a primitive power of mind, 
it, and not nervous connections, becomes the ground of 
rational associations. Experience, in the human mind, 
unites impressions under the rational relations of time, 
cause, space ; and memory restores them under these 
forms. The nature of the union and of the restoration is 
found in the reason. The theory of Mr. Spencer expounds 
a large class of facts which lie close to the border line 
which separates organic and conscious action, but cannot 
be successfully extended to those higher activities of 
mind which constitute the preeminent theme of philos- 
ophy. The memory of the animal, regarded as a repe- 
tition of sensuous experiences, may be explained by it ; 
but in the explanation we totally miss any combining 
power of reason, a consciousness embracing insight, and 
not one simply of receptivity. 

The system of Mr. Spencer purports to be empirical. 
It is as thoroughly deductive as idealism itself. Ideas 
which belong to the mechanical world are carried deduc- 
tively into the organic world ; ideas which belong to the 
organic world are extended deductively over the intellec- 
tual world; and so conclusions are reached which identify 
phenomena a wide way apart in our daily experience of 
them. The facts of physiology are attained not by obser- 
vation, but by long stages of easy inference ; the facts of 
psychology are accepted, not as they lie in living relations, 
but are rendered as the wants of the system demand, and 
thus the whole structure is built together deductively, 
with only a remote likeness to that for which it stands. 
An effort to express all the phenomena of the world in 
terms of matter and motion can be accomplished no 
otherwise than by a deduction which obliterates differ- 



250 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ences, gives figurative expressions a literal force, and fol- 
lows primary dependences, not by observation, but by 
inference and imagination, through all their supposable 
stages. 

Take the following passage in his *^ Psychology," under 
physical synthesis and psychical laws, as an example of 
method. He is explaining the affirmation that each indi- 
vidual reaches a limit beyond which repetitions bring no 
improvement to mental action. '' When a wave of molec- 
ular motion passes through a line of molecules that are 
greatly out of symmetrical arrangement, much of it is 
absorbed in turning them toward symmetrical arrange- 
ment. As they approach nearer and nearer to symmetri- 
cal arrangement, more and more of the wave passes on ; 
less and less is thus absorbed. But to say that each 
molecule offers diminishing resistance to the transfer of 
the wave, is to say that there is a diminution of the force 
which tends to bring it into polar relations with its 
neighbors. And since the molecule has inertia, and is 
also restrained by the actions of surrounding molecules, 
the force available for altering its position bears a con- 
tinually decreasing ratio to the forces that maintain its 
position, until at length the effect of this readjusting 
force becomes insensible." 

There is in this reason thus presented no observation 
of facts. A figurative relation is struck up between very 
remote things, physical on the one side, mental on the 
other, and its deductive extension is offered as a sufficient 
exposition of real causes. This is done with no adequate 
knowledge of the physiological facts which intervene be- 
tween molecular action and mental relations, nor the 
least inquiry into them. What do we know about a wave 
of molecular motion, a symmetrical arrangement of mole- 



HERBERT SPENXER. 25 1 

cules, a polar connection of molecules with their neigh- 
bors, as the basis of a mental process? The mind is 
simply gliding forward on loosely coherent mechanical 
conceptions. You can hardly put a single question to 
such an exposition and secure an acceptable answer. 
Hundreds of pages of these explanations, imposing as 
they may seem to be, bring us no nearer to understand- 
ing a single intellectual power. The process is merely 
beating exceedingly thin small nuggets of gold, till they 
cover over immense surfaces in our work of purely wooden 
construction. 

The philosophy of Spencer, because it stands as the 
best developed and strongest expression of a movement 
not to be escaped, and productive incidentally of great 
advantages, deserves a somewhat disproportionate atten- 
tion. We regard it as in a high degree the product of 
the scientific imagination. The mind is led on by ductile 
images and tenacious physical connections, and is so oc- 
cupied with the constructive relations possible to them 
as to neglect both the cerebral phenomena implied in 
them and any identification of them Avith the mental 
activities for which thev are made to stand. Evervthing" 
is virtually assumed, except the one tenuous thread which 
comes steadily forth from the deductive spinneret. This 
is due to the easy extension which under the idea of causa- 
tion we give to mechanical forces, and to the fact that the 
language we employ in psychology is so full of the physi- 
cal imagery of its birth that it imparts vitalit}' to the most 
barren processes. If Spencer wished to present his con- 
clusions in their real baldness, he would be compelled to 
lay aside the vocabulary of philosophy, and even to press 
out of the words which express purely physical relations 
much of their present force. In spite of the apparent 



252 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

plainness of his style — or, rather, by means of it — com- 
paratively few readers are aware of the very limited re- 
sults to which his data entitle him, and their great remote- 
ness from human experience. They have enriched the 
reasoning, as they have pursued it, with fruitful mental 
conceptions, begotten under an intellectual life much 
larger than that whose dimensions they are measuring. 
They bring a scale to the map which is not that which 
belongs to it. They need the remorseless logic of Hume 
to break the illusion for them. 

Spencer regards, for instance, the sense of resistance as 
the substratum of knowledge, the universal constituent of 
causation. Yet he speaks of the impression of resistance 
as one and the same thing in every sensitive creature, and 
in every part of the sensitive organism. There are at 
least six forms of resistance of which we take cognizance, 
and which in no way explain each other. There is the 
mechanical resistance offered by one solid to another by 
virtue of hardness, and that which is due to weight. 
There is the resistance which a living thing, as a tree, 
presents to unfavorable conditions of growth. There is 
the pressure of contact in the animal system, Avhich may 
produce motion without awakening sensation. There are 
the sensations incident to all forms of contact, which, J 
Avithout observation, play so extended a part in associa- ? 
tion. And there is that rational recognition of these sen- 
sations by which they become the data of knowledge, 
and open up to us the external world. To assume that 
resistance and the causation it involves are one and the 
same fact in these various forms, that the last form can 
be, by consistent manipulation, evolved out of the first 
form, is to wipe out fundamental differences, and substi- 
tute an agreement of words for an agreement of things. 



HERBERT SPENCER. 253 

• 
When Spencer says our cognition of space can arise only 

through an interpretation of resistance, he ought to mean 
through its rational interpretation, yet he can only mean 
one more implication in those cerebral involutions, which, 
one and all, demand the light of reason as a condition 
of knowledge. These three things, so distinct in them- 
selves, cerebral involutions, associative processes, and 
rational apprehensions, are made to flow together, till 
the primary boundaries of knowledge are swept away. 
If the three are one, of course the evolution of each from 
the other is easy. 

Spencer affirms in the same connection that we are 
conscious of force. But if we are conscious of force, 
force is a mental phenomenon, and its many forms are 
one and the same thing. What meaning can we, under 
this statement, attach to the equivalence of forces? 
Which force is it we are conscious of — mechanical, chemi- 
cal, or thermal? Spencer, under the flexibility of lan- 
guage, allows these three things, physical force, organic ex- 
periences, intellectual relations, to coalesce with each other 
or to fall apart, as suits the convenience of the moment. 

Another example of this trick of words is found in the 
use which Spencer makes of *' The Unknown." These 
words steal vigor from the vocabulary of theology. With- 
out that inspiration they would be an empty symbol.- 
The consistent positivists are quite right in indignantly 
disclaiming his Unknown as a part of a discarded system. 
It is not something absolutely unknown, a mere nothing, 
which he is striving to introduce anew into the currency 
of thought. It comes laden with the weight of causes, 
and begins at once to gather values from all the history 
of religious thought. It soon becomes the summation of 
physical and spiritual energies, and grows great under the 



254 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

appellation of The Unknown, not as possessed of no known 
efificiency, but as embracing all known energies in a tran- 
scendent form. It is the transcendentalism of divine 
attributes, which, by a silent, irresistible induction, slowly 
passes over to this empty entity, this verbal contradiction, 
of Spencer. The same phrase introduces the conception 
either as the overflowing term of fulness or as the vanish- 
ing line of being. The mind is left to play between the 
two as if they were identical ; to accept The Unknown — 
as so many are now doing — as a new discovery of faith, 
or to retain it as the dead-line of intelligence. 

If what has now been urged is at all true, the empirical 
philosophy, notwithstanding its amplitude, the demon- 
strative character it so readily affects, the light it often 
yields when its inquiries lie in the direction of organic 
facts, is exceedingly superficial. It is constantly hiding 
the true quality of higher activities under lower ones, 
and assuming this equivalence as the very substance of 
its proof. It effaces all sharp discrimination, and puts 
voluminous description in place of precise analysis. It 
erects an immense edifice on temporary supports, and 
forgets to replace them by real foundations. It traces 
imaginary neural dependencies and does not return to 
show their reality ; or their identity with the processes of 
mind ; or the possibility of the purely causal relations of 
the one standing for the conscious connections of the 
other; or the feasibility of maintaining the distinctions of 
truth ; or of generating truth and error by means of a 
fixed physical movement ; or of reaching either actual 
agreements or disagreements in intellectual conclusions 
by a kindred genetic movement in distinct brains. The 
real substructure of philosophy is nowhere built. It is 
assumed or deferred. Mr. Spencer's philosophy could 



CARPENTER. 255 

hardly have achieved any great success, were it not that 
there are so many facts of organic Hfe to which it is more 
or less applicable ; were it not that its successes on the 
inferior side atoned for or concealed its failures on the 
superior side ; and that so many are so eager to reap 
the harvest of the doctrine of evolution, and have so 
strong and predetermined a faith in it. If sheaves are 
brought in which yield but little grain, they ascribe the 
fact to hasty cultivation, and still retain their first confi- 
dence. A deep conviction is still present, the result of 
successful physical inquiries, as expressed in the words 
of Huxley, '' Consciousness is the function of nervous mat- 
ter, when that nervous matter has attained a certain degree 
of organization." '^ The progress of science means the 
extension of the province of what we call matter and 
causation, and the concomitant exclusion from the regions 
of inquiry of what we call spirit and spontaneity." Under 
this current conviction many were ready to see the pre- 
liminary work of identification between cerebral and men- 
tal connections passed lightly, and the possible parallel- 
ism of the two traced extendedly. This Mr. Spencer has 
done to the satisfaction of his disciples, having left as far 
behind him as any of his predecessors the facts of expe- 
rience, being fully occupied with the in.genious work of 
making an intellectual world out of material forces. In- 
stead of supplementing science with philosophy he has 
made philosophy an annex of science, and so has won his 
following at once. 

§ 12. Dr. Carpenter, in his '' Physiology of Mind," has 
dealt more directly with the primary terms in an em- 
pirical philosophy, and has endeavored to establish an 
equivalence between simply cerebral activity and the ac- 
tivity of thought. Antecedent cerebral action is assumed 



256 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

as a means of explaining conclusions that have entered 
the mind abruptly, and judgments involving unusual in- 
sight. There is thus presumably a mental state, and that 
one of marked intelligence, the direct product of neural 
activity. Judgment, as well as sensation, becomes the 
result of antecedent physical causes. When we accept a 
previous cerebration as the ground of a particular rational 
conviction, our cause is wholly conjectural. The sudden 
insight must establish the existence of the cause before 
the cause in turn can explain the insight. We are not 
deducing effects from known causes : we are deducing 
unknown causes from effects. Moreover, the causes thus 
assumed give no real explanation to the mental states 
which are said to follow from them. We can give no rea- 
son why a definite cerebration is not, when it first occurs, 
accompanied by the thought appropriate to it ; nor why, 
failing of this, it should have any effect on a later act of 
real intelligence. The process is not made more simple, 
but more complex, the unmanageable elements are not 
fewer, but more numerous, as the result of our supposi- 
tion. It is, therefore, most unphilosophical as assuming 
unknown causes, causes whose connection with the effects 
we cannot trace, and which simply enhance the complex- 
ity of the problem. Far better is it to accept the fact as 
indicating an ultimate power of mind. The action of the 
mind culminates in sudden insight ; it has its vantage 
points and its moments of power. Moreover, these suc- 
cessful judgments, when formed, sweep the whole ground. 
They are complete within themselves, and leave nothing, 
as a missing link, to be referred to some previous action. 
These suppositions need the support of a previous identi- 
fication of thought with cerebration, and can bring no 
proof to the doctrine itself. 



ROMANES. 257 

Empiricism quietly assumes that sensation is the type 
of thought, but sensation and thought differ so widely as 
to make this view improbable. A thought that is the 
product of previous physical causes must lose its func- 
tion as a thought. The mind may as well remain exclu- 
sively under a simply sensuous, impulsive experience, ade- 
quate within itself to all purposes of control. The fact 
that activities of mind and of brain are constant accom- 
paniments of each other does not define the line of de- 
pendence between them. Machinery is a means to ex- 
pressing force, as in the steam-engine. We are not, 
therefore, to suppose that the motion of the mechanism 
is the antecedent of the force. If thought is an impelling 
power, it gains a rational purpose ; if it is not, it becomes 
an illusion and a superfluity. The connections would 
hold without these shadows in consciousness as well as 
with them. 

If we are to have a psychology in which cerebration is 
to be regarded as the ground and cause of thought, it 
must open its inquiries by a distinct and sufficient proof 
of that fact. It is not, one which lies on the surface of 
experience, but the reverse rather. The multiplied de- 
tails of empiricism lose their interest, till this fundamental 
assumption is established. 

§ 13. George John Romanes, in support of the doctrine 
of evolution, has discussed very extendedly animal and 
human intelligence, and the two as embraced in one line 
of development. Any acceptable theory of these two 
phases of mental life must cover the entire group of facts 
broadly. Chief among these phenomena is that universal 
observation that the animal arrives quickly at the limits 
of knowledge, while rational powers meet with no kin- 
dred restraints. Farther, as a means to this develop- 
17 



258 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ment, and in furtherance of it, men create language, the 
signs of abstract ideas. Animals fail to use it, even when 
it is forced upon them. 

There are two very distinct forms of intelligence, sensu- 
ous impressions associatively combined, and ideas reflect- 
ively united under rational relations. The first is suffi- 
cient to account for the intelligence of the animal in its 
unprogressive form ; the second belongs to the human 
mind, in its endlessly progressive power. 

Mr. Romanes interprets the actions of brutes too liber- 
ally in the inner experiences they imply. The gist of his 
argument, however, lies in establishing a common ground 
to which the animal attains, and from which the infant 
takes its departure. This overlap is the possession by 
both of recepts. Recepts are general impressions not 
reflectively defined. When defined, they pass into con- 
cepts, give occasion for language, and open the highways 
of thought. The child, for example, perceives the agree- 
ment between dogs, and at once tacitly establishes the 
class. The dog, it is affirmed, does the like thing, and ■; 
recognizes a sheep as a sheep, notwithstanding individual 
differences. Thus, the animal has attained the impres- 
sions from which the child derives his concepts. 

Recepts, in a sensuous experience, are simply shadows 
cast upon it from above. Like causes are sufficient to 
produce like effects, with no recognition, in sensation, 
either of agreements or disagreements, between them. An | 
unreflective discrimination, on the other hand, is involved 
from the outset in a spontaneous use of rational powers. 
Reflection is simply bringing more distinctly before the j 
mind the processes normal to it. No amount of light ^ 
thrown on sensuous associations can disclose in them 
rational connections, while rational connections cannot 



EVOLUTION. 259 

fail, under the reflective use of its powers by the mind, to 
reveal their latent bonds of union in primitive notions. 
The phenomena support this psychology. Passing a few 
acts whose implications are differently rendered, the ani- 
mal admittedly fails to find the realm of reason, and the 
child enters almost at once, and necessarily, into it. The 
reason of the difference is as fundamental as the differ- 
ence itself. It is, that in the one case the rational impli- 
cations involved are potentially present, in the other, they 
are not. 

§ 14. The later stages of empiricism have been closely 
associated with evolution. Evolution demands an em- 
pirical psychology. We cannot consider this question to 
any advantage, without understanding by evolution — 
what it ought exclusively to designate — the unfolding of 
forces without increments. A doctrine of development 
is wholly consistent with an intuitive psychology. Evo- 
lution prejudges such a psychology. 

Its weakness as a psychological theory is disclosed at 
once in the part which causation is made to play. Fun- 
damental as is this conception to evolution, the psychol- 
ogy incident to evolution has no way of establishing it. 
Its usual substitute for causation is succession, but under 
succession evolution loses its hold ; evolution afHrms a 
quantitative and qualitative dependence of each succeed- 
ing on each preceding physical state in the conjoint flow 
of events. Under simple succession there are no measure- 
ments with which to fill out this conception. Less and 
more can follow each other, and we must have some 
notion of forces between which an equivalence can be 
affirmed. In mere sensuous phenomena, our equilibrium, 
the basis of our evolution, is lost. Restore it again arbi- 
trarily, and, as we have so often pointed out, causal de- 



26o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

pendencies become the staple of rational connections, and 
these in turn disappear. We can neither unite our events 
nor make our thoughts cohere without a psychology 
other than that provided by empiricism. 

Discussions in the philosophy of evolution and in the 
detail of its methods show, in consequence of this weak- 
ening down of the inner rational links of being, a constant 
tendency to occupy themselves with processes rather than 
with powers, with phenomena rather than with the rela- 
tions they interpret. Granting freely the many and great 
advantages which have followed this new direction of 
inquiry, it, in itself, at once leads to maimed and halting 
results. It attains to the terms of reason, but not to 
reason itself. 

An example of this is seen in Spencer's definition of 
life : *' The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, 
both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with 
external coexistences and sequences." If this definition 
is to be regarded as simply an effort to point out one 
feature which the various forms of vital action have in 
common, it is fairly successful, but it is in no sense a law. 
It explains nothing. It leaves each specific type of or- 
ganic structure exactly what it was, and where it was, 
previous to the generalization ; a distinct energy or group 
of energies to be considered by itself, and capable of no 
reference beyond itself. The differences in it are all 
there, and must be finally accepted and understood as 
differences. 

Evolution gives rise to a tendency to minimize distinc- 
tions, and to reduce their significance in themselves and 
in their relations. Shortening one's stride does not alter 
the fact of progress, nor does the reduction of transitional 
terms in their extent destroy their nature. Our knowl- 



EVOLUTION. 261 

edge Is made up of two somewhat opposed, yet supple- 
mentary, processes, the careful laying down of dividing 
lines and the constant restoration of unity in spite of 
them. To obscure differences is to obscure agreements. 
The analytical and the synthetical movements must sus- 
tain each other. Evolution can only be converted into 
progress by being something more and better than itself. 
If there is no reason why we should be unwilling to unite 
each succeeding to each preceding step, there is also no 
reason why we should not freely accept the physical and 
intellectual advance present at every stage. 

Regardless of the widest relation of events, instinct 
has been thought of as *' lapsed knowledge," a knowledge 
which has sunk into the connections of habit. Habit is 
allied to instinct, and knowledge may associate itself with, 
and so, in a limited degree, be merged in, instinct, but 
these incidental relations should not, for a moment, cover 
up the grand sequence of knowledge to instinct, and the 
partial displacement of the organic by the rational terms 
of life. 

Evolution assigns itself an impossible task, to fully 
and obviously include all succeeding stages in preceding 
ones. It cannot, therefore, avoid doing the facts them- 
selves an injury, obscuring, in the progress of events, 
those subtile and beautiful diversities which accumulate 
upon us in the growth of the world. Growth is not ad- 
mitted. The movement must be the more mechanical 
one of evolution. Yet the world is best apprehended in 
experience under the notion of growth, a development by 
stages, with increments, toward a more perfect organiza- 
tion. A wish to put evolution in place of growth must 
be attended with an effort to scout all later forms of de- 
velopment, and preeminently that rational life in which 



262 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

they all unite. The method and the impulse become 
intensely a priori. Empiricism, working in defence of 
evolution, should greatly fear an undue reduction of the 
facts with which it has to deal. There is in it a con- 
sciousness of doing this, as was shown in the eagerness 
with which, having first denied intuitive truths, it after- 
ward laid hold of inheritance as a means of explaining 
their peculiar quality. 

The philosophy of evolution discharges the colors from 
a half-dozen prints, and then brings forward the bleached 
texture as proof of the ultimate identity of them all. 
Quite true, we reply, if attention is directed to the point 
in the process which precedes prints, but wholly untrue if 
directed to prints themselves. " We can think of matter 
only in terms of mind. We can think of mind only in 
terms of matter." We accept the assertions, if we are to 
understand thereby a constant correlation of the two. 
We as heartily deny them, if they are intended to identify 
matter and mind. Such a result abolishes the starting- 
point. We need no philosophy of identity. We must 
hold fast the diversity with exactly the same strength with 
which we seize the unity. We pass lightly the proofs of 
a system which issues in vacating its premises, and in 
rendering its own conclusions meaningless. It is not so 
much the weakness of successive steps as it is the obvi- 
ous falseness of results that is fatal to a philosophy of 
evolution. I£ all processes are alike mental, and all alike 
causal, and all convertible, then our philosophy is a wheel 
whose constructive parts are lost to vision by its own 
revolution. We need to return to our uncorrected im- 
pressions of difference, in order either to secure a motive, 
a method, or a result of inquiry. The motive is the 
divergence between matter and mind, the method is by 



EVOLUTION. 263 

mental action, the result rests wholly on the soundness 
of the reasoning by which it is reached. This distinction 
makes coherent every step which ends in its repudiation. 

The uneasiness which compels empiricism, having re- 
jected the more obvious explanation of phenomena, to 
bring forward some wholly conjectural causes, is seen in 
the physiological units of Mr. Spencer, and the gemmules 
of Mr. Darwin. Here is an organic fact on a grand scale, 
the body of man. It involves, apparently, many peculiar 
powers in its laws of growth, recuperation, propagation, 
and improvement. How shall they be explained? Mr. 
Spencer might have denied, with Professor Huxley, the 
distinct significance of life, and of the combinations which 
arise under it; he might, with his inadequate grasp of 
causes, have left these phenomena as mere items under 
his general descriptive law of equilibrium. But the sense 
of need was too strong for these methods. He intro- 
duces imaginary physiological units, infinite in number, 
so strangely endowed as to exceed all other wonders, and 
refers to them the minor marvels of the living body. 
These are infinitesimals, and he seems to think that, 
having driven constructive forces back into them, he has 
reduced the problem of life to their dimensions. Such a 
philosophy is not unlike that of the savage who affirmed 
that the steam-engine enclosed a horse. The savage had 
this advantage, that he knew empirically that to which 
he referred the new fact before him. True philosophy 
demands a cautious analysis of the phenomena into all 
their constituents, and a cheerful acceptance of them in 
these simplest forms. 

Mr. Spencer is led, having disparaged reason in his 
theory of mind, to disparage it of set purpose as giving 
any law to events. '' What is this realism which is estab- 



264 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

lished as a doctrine long before reasoning begins, which 
immeasurably transcends reasoning in certainty, and 
which reasoning cannot justify farther than by finding 
that its own deliverances are wrong when at variance with 
it ? " This realism of Spencer, whose conclusions are so 
supreme that we owe our wisdom to them and cannot 
bring it in turn to bear upon them, is the intellectual 
aggregate of the entire process of evolution. Individual 
reason stands abashed in its presence. Yet this way of 
looking at knowledge as a conjoint product, slowly accu- 
mulating within itself, is essentially absurd. Individual 
reason must be complete in its own action ; it must be 
like reflections of light, possessed of all the powers of 
light. The progress of thought is not a march in the 
physical world, each position being defined by a central 
point around which the camp of humanity is pitched. If 
knowledge is a collective achievement of this sort, then 
our only inquiry is, what opinions contain the averages of 
the realistic movement ? Our positions are defined by 
measurements from the centre of development. Such 
realism would be as destructive to the conclusions of Mr. 
Spencer as to those of another. He is not invulnerable by 
virtue of any nearness to the centre of aggregate thought 
among men. He is rather especially remote from it. 

One, in pursuing such a philosophy, cannot fail to be 
struck with the boldness with which, opportunity being 
given, it overleaps its own barriers and rushes for its goal, 
not stopping to inquire whether the evolutionary move- 
ment is before or behind it, on the right or the left. Thus 
Mr. Spencer, having laboriously traced the unfolding of 
religious ideas, ideas so central and potent among men, 
suddenly narrows down the result to his own formula, the 
Unknown. What conclusion is to-day more remote from 



EVOLUTION. 265 

actual evolution, looked on, not as an Incomplete move- 
ment of reason, but as '* realism " ? Not only is the pyra- 
mid, whose foundations are hardly more than laid, com- 
pleted at once by Mr. Spencer, a capstone is put upon it, 
invisible to the mass of men. Experience turns at every 
step of progress on the assertion of the sufficiency of rea- 
son, and that in the face of all its errors. We can discuss 
nothing, and measure nothing, on any other terms. The 
postulate of all intellectual processes is the adequacy of 
intellectual powers. The constant task of thought is to 
confront " realism." We may attach great importance 
to " realism," but it is an importance tempered by a 
supreme sense of the revelation which lies in intellectual 
light. 

The method is obviously self-contradictory. What, 
contending against reason in behalf of '* realism," is Mr. 
Spencer appealing to but to reason itself? If reason, 
individual reason, fails to defend him, whence will his 
defence come ? If progress and truth are simply ques- 
tions of *' realism," then the more inert we are the better, 
as we shall thereby keep nearest the mathematical centre 
which defines correctness. The philosophy appeals to 
reason in a discussion of the methods of progress, and 
then extinguishes reason by an assertion of '' realism." 
Reason sufficient unto itself must be recognized as the 
final output of all '^ realism," the test of all " realism," or 
reason must sink back as a drop in the ocean and be rocked 
to rest by the fitful tossings of cosmic tides. It is absurd 
to kindle a light to see the sun with. It is absurd to 
awaken reason simply to discern the *' realism " that over- 
whelms it. The light that is ours must be for us the 
measure of all light. If the light that is in us be darkness, 
how great is that darkness. 



266 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

These strictures would scarcely be worth making, did 
they not touch a central weakness of evolution as a 
philosophy. That philosophy must be dogmatic to be in 
consistency with itself ; must set up '* realism " as the test 
of truth. Having won our liberty of thought against the 
dogmatism of theology, we must now win it a second 
time against the fatalism of nature, against ^' realism." 

The extent to which empiricism becomes verbal con- 
struction is far greater than either those who frame or 
those who read it are aware. The mind will have its own. 
Give it but words, and shortly it supports them with 
growing entities suited to the purpose they subserve. Nat- 
ure, natural selection, law, the Unknown, gather together 
the attributes of spiritual agents, and travel on with the 
mind as its household gods. Take such a word as hered- 
ity. Discussion under it soon ceases to be collocation of 
phenomena, a marshalling of events. The abstract ex- 
pression gathers life. It accumulates its many powers, 
whether as physiological units or otherwise, sums up in 
itself increasingly complex processes, till that which was 
a mere word, holding firm a relation, becomes a control- 
ling entity of an unknown and most marvellous order. 
Our words impose themselves upon us and become the 
deities of the machine. 

But in what respect, it may be asked, is a spiritual phi- 
losophy better off ? Do not its conceptions grow in a like 
irresistible and unintelligible way ? In this one supreme 
particular, it starts with a most certain, apprehensible, 
and familiar fact in experience, that of a spiritual agent, 
and adheres to it throughout as a term of order and 
knowledge. Experience and that which renders it cohere 
with each other. 



ETHICS. 26^ 



PART III. 

THE ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 15. Ethics necessarily furnishes a very severe test of 
empirical theories. It is the point at which transcendent 
elements are most declared. On the other hand, however, 
moral action is interlaced by a great variety of motives, 
covers human experience in the broadest possible way, is 
amplified and supported by many secondary incentives, 
and so responds to empirical inquiry in results of the 
utmost moment. Empiricism has done some of its best 
work in this field, brought fresh impulses to conduct, and 
marked an era in ethical development. The hasty conclu- 
sions of intuitionalism have been corrected. The immense 
momentum with which the moral forces of the world move 
forward in their own lines of development, and the im- 
mense inertia with which they resist violent changes, 
have been disclosed. Morality is thus seen to involve a 
wide knowledge of all social forces, and increasing wisdom 
in working under them. Whatever illumination there 
may be in the primitive insights of the moral nature, this 
light cannot be turned into beneficent revelation except 
as it gains diffusion and color in the atmosphere of the 
world. 

Empiricism started its ethical speculation with the idea 
of happiness. It was able, for a long time, to add no 
wider motives to the simple pursuit of pleasure. James 
Mill combined the feelings into moral affections by three 
associations. The first connects certain actions with 
pleasure or pain in our own experience. The second 



268 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

unites our personal satisfactions with the praise or dis- 
approval of others. By virtue of these two connections 
conduct comes later to be associated, in a more general 
and abstract way, with censure and commendation. Thus 
morals are rooted in experience. Men will praise thee 
when thou doest well for thyself. The narrow impulses 
gain a generality which serves to soften down their self- 
seeking character. 

§ i6. The completeness with which the English mind 
was subjected to the ethics of happiness is seen in the 
" Moral Philosophy" of William Paley (1743), a dignitary 
of the church, and remarkable as a writer for his clear, 
terse statement, and the firmness of his hold on the 
nearest and most convincing arguments. He does not 
hesitate to bring forward, as the last and most inclusive 
motives of obedience to the moral law, — itself resting on 
the will of God — the pleasures and pains of another life. 
It is foolish to resist such overwhelming power. 

As long as personal pleasure is made to supply the im- 
pulse to action, involving in itself through social relations 
what it readily can of the pleasures of others ; as long as 
no distinction, save that of quantity, is recognized between 
pleasures, but all are brought to the same standard of 
measurements, we have no ethical system. We have only 
those conflicting interests, each man pursuing his own 
happiness, which demand a moral law, a law of restraint, 
correction, and organization. The animal kingdom is 
organized within itself, so far as it is organized, by an in- 
stinctive pursuit of well-being, partially expressed in ap- 
petitive enjoyments. The appetites, however, are closely 
bound down to their organic ministrations, and are in 
many directions supplemented by purely instinctive ac- 
tion. The appetites and passions of men are greatly 



BENTHAM. 269 

relaxed. There is in them an easy possibility of discord. 
They attain construction by repressment and development 
under wider incentives than those furnished by them- 
selves, and these are expressed and enforced as the moral 
law. The law of pleasure is a law of prudence, resting 
on the sensibilities themselves ; the law of ethics is the 
law of reason, by which all sensibilities are assigned their 
own proper position in that supreme product, manhood. 
Reason enters by means of this law into its own, and 
rules it. 

A very great change was made in the ethics of empiri- 
cism when Jeremy Bentham (1747) announced, as its 
fundamental principle, The greatest good of the greatest 
number. In it we reach a true and comprehensive moral 
law, a law that can and must be enforced on a moral basis. 
This principle is a revised statement — though a less vital 
one — of the second command, Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself. Henceforth it could not be said that em- 
piricism was lacking ethical truth, or was striving to supply 
its place with a refined self-interest. All that this philos- 
ophy has done for morals has followed this change of 
base. Bentham was especially successful in reinvigorat- 
ing political philosophy, and in securing legal reform. 
The greatest good of the greatest number is a terse, clear, 
and most practical principle in social action. It gathers 
to itself all those more disinterested sentiments which 
have been slowly accumulated under the law of love, and 
at the same time leaves men free to accept it, if they 
choose, as a new truth in the field of empirical inquiry. 
Bentham is an admirable illustration of that sturdy and 
practical tendency, that strong, yet superficial, temper, 
which frequently characterize the English mind. 

This principle taking the foreground, the burden of diffi- 



270 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

culty was instantly and completely shifted in empirical 
ethics. It was now possessed of a law, definite, compre- 
hensive, and applicable. The question that remained was, 
How shall this law be enforced ? The later philosophy 
of empiricism has been diligently occupied with this prob- 
lem. Its measure of success is shown in the multiplicity 
of answers, and the constantly renewed attempts to im- 
prove them. Intuitionalism has the very simple response 
that the same reason which discerns the law discerns also 
its fitness, and is ready to enforce it. How can this inter- 
nal sanction be escaped, and an external one be put in 
its place ? 

§ 17. John Stuart Mill relied very much on sympathy 
as impelling obedience. Sympathy is extremely aidful, 
if we already possess moral affections ; but of very little 
aid if we are destitute of them. Sympathy is an exten- 
sion of the existing spiritual state. But empiricism has 
on hand the difficult task of explaining the development 
of the rudiments of the moral affections, and may not, 
therefore, assume a living germ which is to be unfolded 
by sympathy. Sympathy in itself alone remains indiffer- 
ent to virtue. It stands for a simple tendency to share 
feelings akin to our own, be they kindly or malevolent. 
Thus the strange cruelty and social injustice of the color 
sentiment, which belongs to Americans, are enhanced by 
sympathy. Sympathy accelerates currents of feeling 
already present ; it does not create new ones. It may, 
therefore, increase evil and make its correction difficult. 
The moral sentiment- has often occasion to contend with 
our sympathies and break them down. 

Bain looks to conventional sentiment to enforce moral 
precepts. It is for the interest of all that the principle 
of the greatest good of the greatest number should 



ETHICAL LAW. 2/1 

prevail. All may unite, therefore, in approving it and 
imposing it. But how shall the interested action of men, 
taken collectively, issue in the disinterested action of men, 
taken singly? The motive of the many, in their enforce- 
ments, destroys the moral power which is needed in each 
case of obedience. Good-will cannot rise higher than its 
fountains. If men urge upon me morality, in behalf of 
their interests, I shall be inclined to reject it, in behalf 
of my own interests. The conflict of interests remains, 
and each will do as cunningly as he can. If it be said the 
greatest good of the greatest number really embraces the 
well-being of each man, the response is double. This 
assertion is true only on high moral grounds, the affec- 
tions being already in full force ; nor can its truth, in the 
midst of conflict, be seen by those of feeble moral endow- 
ment. If they deny it, as in most specific cases they 
will, the grappling-iron slips, and can secure no farther 
hold. 

Moreover, this enforcement on the part of the com- 
munity assumes that there are in the individual those 
moral germs which prepare the way for it. One without 
ethical convictions can come under no persuasions but 
those of pleasure and penalty in their palpable forms. 
Conventional sentiment, like sympathy, only prospers by 
an assumption of moral conditions. 

Spencer, always at work in the line of evolution, makes 
what use he can of inheritance in explaining the present 
vigor of the moral law. The experience of many genera- 
tions is organized together and consolidated in what we 
now regard as the indubitable truths of morals. Leslie 
Stephen, in his " Science of Ethics," has very thoroughly 
elaborated the same opinion. Moral sentiments are a 
" social tissue," which is produced by the innumerable 



2/2 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

actions and reactions of society under increasingly com- 
plex relations, broadening interests, and growing light. 
The process of growth is put for the thing grown. If 
Mr. Spencer's words are allowed to stand for what they 
seem to stand for, a social experience on an ethical basis, 
and not shut up to what they are, a neural growth on an 
organic basis, then both what he and what Mr. Stephen 
have to say cover very important and very interesting 
facts. The question, under this presentation, would re- 
solve itself into the deeper question, so difficult to ap- 
proach in an adequate manner, whether the changeable 
conditions under which the higher powers are developed 
cover the powers themselves, or are only the occasions on 
which they are called out. We do not doubt the facts of 
development, but these facts give nothing, create nothing, 
and owe their own significancy to the growing insight 
which accompanies them. In the most protracted and 
complex play of processes, we must still have the powers 
which give character to the play. In our natural selec- 
tion we must have the antecedent, unique variety, itself 
the secret of all success. 

Henry Sidgwick, in his " Methods of Ethics," while 
clinging to the empirical scheme, approaches very closely 
to that intuitionalism which refers the authority of law, 
in the last analysis, to the mind which pronounces upon 
it. The law appeals to reason, and stands approved in 
the court of reason. The reason of man, opened in in- 
sight by large experience, needs not that the principle of 
the greatest good of the greatest number should be laid 
upon it from without. If such a necessity existed, it 
could not be met ; or, if it were met, could not result 
in anything but degradation, the subjection of the mind 
to unethical impulses. Insight, once conceded, must be 



ETHICAL LAW. 273 

pure, personal vision. It cannot be commingled with in- 
stinct, and obscure convictions running along the lines 
of descent. The autocracy of reason can be established 
on no other terms than those of sufficient knowledge and 
final authority. But the autocracy of reason is the postu- 
late of all philosophy. 

§ 18. The largest spiritual life can drink in health and 
inspiration only in the purest, deepest spiritual atmos- 
phere. A cosmic atmosphere means the pervasive pres- 
ence of reason ; yet reason is everywhere personal, the 
very seat of personality ; is always emotional, the very 
source of the higher affections. Empiricism is a slow 
exhaustion of the medium of divine revelation — personal 
reason. Faith subjected to this process of a constant 
conversion of rational powers and processes into the com- 
plexities of physical changes, into terms of matter and 
motion, droops and dies like a bird in the bell of an air- 
pump. Every stroke renders more tenuous the vital air, 
and a long, hard struggle sets in between the large de- 
mands of life and the growing scantiness of its conditions. 
In the case before us, this contention lies between the 
wealth of human reason and the spiritual poverty of the 
world in which it is lodged, the warmth of human love 
and the immense depths into which it is left to radiate its 
heat without reflection. It is astonishing that the faith 
of England has so successfully resisted a philosophy, 
laboring so long, so hard, so skilfully, in the reduction 
of the medium of spiritual life. The fact testifies to the 
inherent force of faith and to that tenacious, practical 
hold of English thought so often referred to. The Eng- 
lishman stops in his conclusions when it becomes incon- 
venient to go farther. 

In ethics, as elsewhere, the crowning disaster overtakes 
18 



274 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

empiricism when it reaches its own results. A law that 
involves no insight in its formation can issue in no insight 
in its application. However the fact may be hidden 
under familiar phrases, the ethics of evolution can be no 
revelation of the soul to itself, or of the world to him who 
lives in it. It can only be an obscure sense of a deep 
underflow of ungovernable energies, on which we and all 
things wait. It expounds not the highest and most intel- 
lectual, but the lowest and most organic experience of the 
race ; not that most moral, but that least moral. 

There has been a slight reduction of this painful rarity 
of the spiritual atmosphere in the illogical concessions 
recently made to the Unknown. Whatever illusions it 
may play upon itself, empirical philosophy can rehabili- 
tate no true theism with the mere shreds of truth that 
have escaped its destructive processes. There may be a 
feeble gasping of the body after breath, but no tingling of 
life to its very extremities under the profound inhalations 
of rational faith. 

The attitude of that sturdy positivist, Frederic Harri- 
son, commands our sympathy, and, in important respects, 
our admiration. He refuses to pursue the dream of a 
dream, to watch for the last colorless distillation of 
a negation as it escapes from the alembic of Spencer, and 
turns with enthusiasm to the " synthesis of humanity," to 
those moral duties and that moral life which lie nearest 
to us. One honors the courage which renews itself in 
defeat. Having lost what constitutes for most earnest- 
minded men the larger share of wealth, a pervasive, spirit- 
ual presence in the world, Mr. Harrison still thinks him- 
self rich in the interplay of human affections. We marvel 
at this buoyancy of hope, and learn much from it. Yet 
the inspiration which makes a synthesis of humanity 



LORD HERBERT. 275 

seem so possible and desirable, as an immediate object of 
pursuit, must come, if it comes wisely, from the reality of 
things widely interpreted, from the indwelling force of the 
world, the spiritual power hidden in its spiritual resources 
— from Infinite Reason. If one saves the argument for 
righteousness in its immediate, practical power, it matters 
far less if he loses some of its inner light. Having trav- 
elled all the obscure and perplexed paths of empiricism, 
Frederic Harrison becomes an astonishment to us, in the 
tenacious hold of the soul on its own, as he gathers up 
the remnants of social, spiritual strength, and builds them 
into a kingdom — heavenly, if not consciously of heaven. 
With the assurance of one who has witnessed a true proc- 
ess of creation, he pronounces this product of gracious 
affections ver}' good. It is not strange that faith lan- 
guishes under empiricism ; it is strange that it renews 
itself so often, and in so many unexpected ways. 
Thought cannot proceed far without these flashes of 
insight. The clear, sultry summer day closes with light- 
ning all along the horizon. Yet, if the highest moral 
possibilities are everywhere present in the world, what 
is this but saying that God is present ? 

PART IV. 
DISSENTIENT PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND. 

§ 19. The philosophy of dissent from the prevailing 
tendency is comparatively meagre in England. It is dis- 
connected, and stands, most of it, in close affiliation with 
religious sentiment. 

Lord Herbert (1581) gave independent and extended 
consideration to that fundamental question. What is 



2/6 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

truth? He reached the conclusion that there are four 
kinds of truth : truth of things, truth of appearances, 
truth of concepts, and intellectual truth. There is a con- 
fusion in this analysis which we shall meet again in a 
more influential form. Truth involves the permanent co- 
herence of things in physical relations, of ideas in intel- 
lectual relations, and the correspondence of our convic- 
tions concerning them with these connections. Truth 
pertains exclusively to propositions. It is the validity of 
knowledge, its coherent character within itself, and its 
representative character in reference to the objects to 
which it pertains. There is neither truth in things nor 
in appearances. There is reality in them, and this reality 
gives occasion to knowledge, and so to truth. Causation 
involves the fixed coherence of physical things, and so 
makes them subjects of knowledge. There is stability in 
things and appearances, and so the mind may have a per- 
manent and correct apprehension of them. But the truth 
does not lie in any agreement of our sensations with the 
objects which occasion them, but in the correspondence 
of those relations between objects arrived at by the in- 
terpretation of sensations and the relations themselves. 
Sensations are simple facts of their own kind, and sus- 
tain no relation of likeness to the things which occasion 
them. Our valid, valuable knowledge does not turn on 
any such similarity, but on the stability of causes and 
effects. The" importance of the relation of causes and 
effects does not lie in any agreement in the sensational 
signs of these causes and effects with the causes and ef- 
fects themselves, but in the certainty of the connections 
indicated by them. We do not know the nature of the 
causes of a disease by knowing its symptoms, the sen- 
sations which accompany it ; yet we have in them the 



LORD HERBERT. 277 

grounds of correct assertion and wise action. If sensa- 
tions were wholly arbitrary signs, like words, and were true 
to their indications, they would remain the conditions of 
real knowledge. Any correspondence of sensations with 
things-in-themselves is as unnecessary as it is fanciful. 
Truth is the agreement of our conception of relations 
with relations themselves. Both are intellectual terms, 
as much so as the meaning of a sentence and our appre- 
hension of its meaning. Truth lies between intellectual 
relations and not between phenomena, though phenom- 
ena must be permanent as a condition of attaining it. 
I think two things to be like because of the sensations 
they call out. They are alike. That is, the relation 
which the facts have suggested to my mind is a real one. 

Instead, then, of four kinds of truth there is one kind, 
the fourth mentioned by Lord Herbert, an agreement of 
relations as grasped by the mind and as yielded by things. 
The truth of things and appearances is simply perma- 
nence, and the truth of concepts is embraced in intel- 
lectual truth. The confusion of the discussion in " De 
Veritate " arises, in large part, from a misapprehension of 
the nature of perception, a subject which had received 
very inadequate treatment. 

According to Lord Herbert, our intellectual faculties 
are four : instinct, the outer sense, the inner sense, and 
the discursive power. The term inner sense was later 
used in connection with ethics, and helped to commingle 
and confuse simple consciousness and that rational insight 
into the nature of conduct which we assign to conscience. 
Under instinct, Lord Herbert included those universal 
ideas which determine the forms of thought. These he 
very distinctly conceives, in some respects, as indicated 
by their criteria, priority, independence, universality, cer- 



278 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tainty, necessity, self-evidence. " So far are these ele- 
ments or sacred principles from being derived from expe- 
rience or observation, that without some of them, or at 
least one of them, we can neither experience nor even 
observe." 

Instinct is an unfortunate word to connect with these 
ideas. Instincts and intuitions touch each other only at 
one point, certainty of action. In other respects they 
are at the farthest remove from each other. Instinct is 
hidden in the darkness of our organic constitution, intui- 
tion arises in the clearest light of our intellectual life. 
However little revelation there may be in an intellectual 
act, its illumination is in its intuitive elements. 

The absence of all careful analysis in reaching these 
primitive ideas is seen in the five primary religious truths 
which Lord Herbert lays down ; the being of God, the 
fitness of worship, virtue its chief element, repentance a 
duty, and a future life. These are complex and obscure 
judgments which proceed, like other judgments, under 
intuitive ideas, but have no claim to be direct products of 
insight. We see at once what a provocation such a use 
of primary convictions gave to their absolute denial. In- 
quiry could not advance under such assumptions. 

Lord Herbert was very influential in giving extension 
to deism. This fact helped to reduce the weight of his 
opinions. It not unfrequently happens that philosophi- 
cal doctrines, atheistic in their tendency but associated 
with belief, have an advantage, in the religious mind, over 
opinions profoundly theistic, but critical of current dogma. 
Lord Herbert helped to call out the attack of Locke on 
innate ideas. 

§ 20. The intolerant and intolerable opinions of Hobbes 
did not fail to awaken earnest opposition in minds in the 



SAMUEL CLARKE. 279 

least spiritually inclined. Conspicuous among his oppo- 
nents was Ralph Cudworth (1617), of Cambridge. His 
*' Intellectual System of the Universe " is a full represen- 
tation of Greek and scholastic philosophy. He was an un- 
sparing critic of Hobbes, a friendly critic of Descartes, and 
imbued with some of the most pregnant opinions of Plato. 
Moral distinctions, as due to the insight of reason and the 
freedom of the will, were earnestly defended by him. 

Henry More (1614), with less erudition and more imagi- 
nation, labored in the same direction. They endeavored, 
with limited success, to rally in resistance to the new phi- 
losophy the most sober and fundamental conclusions of 
previous thought. This effort was made largely in behalf 
of religious truth, and suffered speculatively the weakness 
incident to such a dependence. The religious spirit, great 
as may be its value, is usually too slow in discerning new 
truth, too reluctant to cast itself unreservedly on reason, 
to be able to control a fresh impulse of inquiry, which is 
sustained by any real insight, and is struggling to enlarge 
the horizon of knowledge. It is impossible to keep the 
inevitable processes of change within the lines of growth 
that orthodoxy assigns them. It is orthodoxy itself that 
needs relaxation. Too much resistance begets too much 
eagerness in attack, and wasteful overthrow thus becomes 
the antecedent of construction. 

§ 21. There was so much in empiricism, notwithstand- 
ing the softened form in which it was presented, inimical 
to religious truth, that it could not fail to call out a re- 
assertion of fundamental principles from the wiser defend- 
ers of faith. Samuel Clarke (1675), without directly 
attacking the empiricism of Locke, reverted to older 
methods and reaffirmed the great truths of spiritual phi- 
losophy, the being of God, the independent nature of 



28o ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

right, and the freedom of the will, resting these doctrines 
on an intuitive basis. Dr. Clarke is especially associated 
with an argument for the being of God. It reposes largely 
on a priori grounds — the necessity of the conception to any 
rational comprehension of the universe. He regarded 
right as involved in the fitness of things, and therefore 
virtually as an attribute to be apprehended by the reason. 
His philosophy appeared in detached treatises and partial 
discussions, and, in the system involved, was profoundly 
opposed to Locke. If not a formal protest against em- 
piricism, it broke decidedly with it. It was influential in 
maintaining a tonic atmosphere of faith, resting on rea- 
son. Reason is given a scope quite beyond the senses, 
and becomes a power of interpretation that leads us, by 
means of sensations, into a higher realm of ideas. 

§ 22. Bishop Berkeley (1684) stands quite by himself. 
Idealism has played a very secondary part in English phi- 
losophy. The idealism of Berkeley did not arise from 
magnifying mental processes, and displacing with them 
the physical phenomena disclosed in the senses, but 
sprang from the dualism of Descartes, and from the 
weakness involved in empiricism itself. Empiricism be- 
comes uncertain in its affirmation of any exterior reference 
of sensations. The mind is so robbed of its native powers 
as to be able to make no primitive assertion with cer- 
tainty. Sensations, as simple phenomena, overmaster 
the mind, and hold it in subjection to themselves. Mill 
gave this tendency full expression in regarding matter as 
only the possibility of sensations. The correct and firm 
reference of our ideas becomes impossible. Berkeley, 
much impressed by the empiricism of Locke, and escaping 
the fracture in the universe involved in the system of 
Descartes, affirmed that the true origin of sensations is 



BISHOP BERKELEY. 28l 

the divine mind. They arise, not between us and the 
outer world, but between us and God. Direct action, on 
the part of God, is substituted for constant intervention 
between two forms of being which cannot immediately 
touch each other. 

Faith was saved from the unbelief incident to referring 
all our knowledge to the external world, by pushing this 
world one side, and putting God in its place. This con- 
clusion was too foreign to familiar convictions, too incap- 
able of any proof, too completely subject to religious 
faith, to be widely accepted. Only a few, like President 
Jonathan Edwards, having the same speculative cast of 
mind and the same intense religious temper, were ready 
to receive this bold solution of Bishop Berkeley. It was 
united in Edwards with a like large concession to empiri- 
cism, as seen in his complete subjection of the will to ex- 
isting conditions of action. 

This reference of sensations cannot be successfully dis- 
cussed, except in connection with those ideas under which 
the mind lays down the primitive outlines of belief. As 
regards these ideas, Berkeley was quite at one with Locke. 
Time is the succession of ideas, space the sense of unre- 
stricted motion, and causation the impression of force 
derived from the will. Not only was Berkeley unable, 
against the entire flow of conviction, to secure any belief 
in this new reference of experience to God, no aid could 
have come to faith by such a reference, under the prin- 
ciples of empiricism. The phenomena of mind must have 
remained of the same limited, barren order, to whatever 
attributed. The difficulty is not in the ascription, but in 
the meagre character of the knowledge ascribed. If our 
knowledge is to be one of phenomena simply, it matters 
little whence the phenomena flow. There is in them no 



282 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

transcendent element. The mind is hopelessly enclosed 
in its own experience. If it refers these sensuous terms 
of its life to God, the very notion of God is introduced 
surreptitiously, and can in no way be justified. Whatever 
the ultimate term, nature or God, we can neither affirm 
it nor anything concerning it. It is simply the vacancy 
which encloses our sensuous experience, the Unknown. 

The contribution of real value which Berkeley made to 
philosophy was a more complete and correct interpreta- 
tion of sensation in his " Theory of Vision." Secondary 
qualities were referred to the nature of mind, acting 
through organs of sense. They do not indicate any like- 
ness in material objects to themselves, but only suitable 
causes awakening the corresponding impressions. In the 
passage of sensations into perceptions, the element of 
feeling is obscured or lost altogether, and the judgments 
incident to it take the foreground. The subjective char- 
acter of sensations thus disappears, and our knowledge 
assumes its objective cast. The color is thought to be- 
long to the apple, the music to the instrument. If the 
light is so intense as to give pain, we refer the pain to 
the eye ; but when it resolves itself into the soft tints of a 
cloud, these belong to the cloud. Berkeley's '^ Theory of 
Vision " recognizes the steps of development in percep- 
tion, and the obscuration of original terms in the abbrevi- 
ated process by which sensation as feeling is replaced by 
perception as "knowing. 

When Berkeley added, to this reference of what were 
termed secondary qualities to the mind, a similar reference 
of primary qualities, as more obscure parts of this same 
experience, all knowledge became at once so thoroughly a 
matter of subjective impressions as to give ready admis- 
sion to materialistic idealism, the most fugitive and futile 



BISHOP BUTLER. 283 

philosophy possible — a philosophy in which the mind is 
hopelessly enveloped in an experience whose valid being, 
either in itself or out of itself, whose permanence and 
scope, it cannot affirm. Indeed, affirmation is lost to it. 
The mind yields its powers to the evolution of physical 
forces, and in the end can neither reclaim them nor gain 
a firm foothold among the forces which have devoured 
them. It has betrayed the insights of faith to the single 
idea of evolution, and this, in turn, is so far lost to it that 
it can affirm no world of realities in which it takes effect. 
The mind becomes subject to shifts and perturbations to 
which it can set no limits, and from which it can find no 
escape. 

Berkeley, in raising the question of the nature of things 
— " things as they are " — opened a discussion which was 
pushed much farther by Kant and those who succeeded 
him. The idealism of Germany was allied in its origin to 
that of Berkeley. 

§ 23. The philosophy of Bishop Butler (1692), like that 
of Dr. Clarke, was fragmentary rather than systematic, 
and was affiliated with it in spirit. Virtue involves an or- 
der of nature comprehensible by the reason and enforced 
by it. The work of Bishop Butler of the widest influence 
was his ^' Analogy." It was directed against the unbelief 
of the time, and hit more exactly than any other treatise 
the practical habit of the English mind. It urged the fact 
that the difficulties which we find in revelation are pre- 
cisely those we meet in the construction of the world. 
If we accept these, equally may we those. In whatever 
direction we move, the same problems confront us. Reve- 
lation does not occasion the perplexity, but is only one 
form of it. As sensible men we shall not plunge ourselves 
into an unbelief which brings no remedy. Men, like Dr. 



284 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Clarke and Bishop Butler, occupying the positions of a 
previous philosophy without giving that philosophy any 
systematic restatement, held firm the ties of faith against 
the disintegrating tendencies that accompany empirical 
thought. 

At a later period, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772), who 
came strongly under the influence of Kant and German 
philosophy, rejected scornfully the empirical method in 
English inquiry, and endeavored to restore to it the ele- 
ment of insight. His effort was partially successful, and 
would have been more so had it not suffered, like all his 
undertakings, from the weakness of his own disjointed 
character. He enforced the distinction between the un- 
derstanding and the reason, and helped to give to the 
term " reason " that higher and more definite meaning it 
has since attained in psychology — the mind's insight into 
primary ideas. Herein he passed beyond Kant, rather 
than was led by him. Coleridge combined, in an unusual 
degree, the faults and excellences of intuitionalism. The 
vigor of his powers was so great that, in spite of a vague 
and transcendental method, he flashed intense light on 
obscure relations. We owe an incalculable debt to em- 
piricism for the more definite and tangible lines of inquiry 
which it has instituted. We need both facts and their 
interpretation. But facts are the condition of sound 
interpretation, and have, in themselves, an antecedent 
value. 

§ 24. James Martineau is by far the most coherent, 
full, and forceful representative of intuitive philosophy 
in England. Though his works have been chiefly critical, 
ethical, and religious, they contain a distinct statement of 
first principles, brought forward in many connections and 
fortified in many ways. 



MARTINEAU. 285 

" To sum up In brief the positions which define our 
base ; the collision of the mind's activity and receptivity 
breaks a sensory monism into the cognitive dualism of 
self and not-self, each with its own activity facing the 
other's receptivity. The two activities, taken as a related 
pair, and construed by the member immediately known, 
constitute, in dynamical antithesis, cause within and cause 
without ; the two receptivities, inversely, effect without 
and effect within. But, to be thus provided with a witJiin 
and a withoict, the dualism must also carry a geometrical 
antithesis of here for the self with its contents, there for 
the not-self with its contents, involving space, and, after 
more than one perception, time. Thus completed, per- 
ception finally recognizes, in the perceiving subject and 
the perceived object, a predicate over and above the acts 
issued and the states received, both of which are in time- 
order, viz., a presence in space, irrespective of succession, 
and the standing-ground of it ; that is, self-identical exist- 
ence, or subsistence, in antithesis to changing phenomena, 
whether given out or taken in. It needs but little reflec- 
tion to be convinced that no one of these thought-rela- 
tions has any right of precedence over the rest, any logical 
or psychological priority ; with the exception of the last, 
which asks for time enough to allow the qualities of an 
object to disengage themselves, by an appeal to the sev- 
eral senses, from the original ' unity of consciousness.' All 
the rest are alike, and at once implicit in immediate per- 
ception of any and every kind ; and not being separately 
contributed by empirical lessons, or deductively worked 
out by reasoning processes, are brought into experience 
by the understanding ab initio, and must be treated as 
its intrinsic categories or conditioning laws of thought."* 

* " A Study of Religion," vol. i., p. 206. 



286 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

This statement is so carefully made that it may fittingly 
bear a close rendering. The fundamental truth asserted 
in it is the primitive power of the mind to render, in a 
rational form, its own experiences. The obscure, sensuous 
elements which continuously cover, without disclosing, 
the terms of knowledge, which hold knoAvledge subject to 
demand, as language contains its ideas, are rendered into 
terms of thought by the rational insight which thought 
implies, from the very beginning holding within itself the 
methods, the intelligible forms, of truth. 

Martineau needs only to break with the Scottish School 
at one point, to put the indirect for the direct, the rational 
for the sensuous, in one more particular, to occupy ground 
thoroughly intuitive, self-consistent, and assertory of the 
supreme nature of reason within itself — its competence 
to do its own work. Martineau gives to the mind an 
immediate knowledge of force in its own action. That is, 
he makes force a sensuous fact offered in the phenomena, 
not a rational term supplied in their interpretation. This 
belief stands quite by itself, and is unsupported by his 
general philosophy. It is a rendering of the notion in 
harmony Avith the doctrine of a direct knowledge of self 
and not-self, but inconsistent with intuitionalism. Force 
is sub-phenomenal, that by which the mind expounds 
phenomena. Consciousness cannot embrace it any more 
in the case of action issuing from the mind and producing 
sensuous results than in action arising from an external 
object, for the very good reason that in neither case is it 
a portion of the phenomena, but the common condition, 
the interpreting idea, of them all. When the mind puts 
forth energy it is aware of its own purpose, but not of 
the connections of force by which that purpose is accom- 
plished. Force, like space and time, is a formal element,. 



MARTINEAU. 28/ 

a rendering by reason of sensuous facts in the intelligible 
terms of causation. This farther logical step being taken, 
the philosophy of Martineau becomes wholly coherent. 
Sensuous facts suggest to the reason as an apprehending 
power, but do not hold for it as a receptive power, the 
general categories of knowledge. Among these categories 
causation is fundamental. 

The derivation of the notion of causation by Martineau 
from the conscious energy of volition leads him to a very 
unusual subversion of words and ideas. He inverts the 
method of the determinist, who, interpreting causation 
by physical facts, robs volition of liberty. He says : " By 
a cause I understand that which determines an alterna- 
tive ; that is, with which it rests to produce either of two 
phenomena." " Far from admitting that different effects 
cannot come from one cause, I even venture on the para- 
dox that nothing is a proper cause which is limited to one 
effect." " There is no real gain in this reversal of words. 
The old ideas remain, and remain to be expounded under 
the old difficulties. Martineau has simply discussed 
choice under the unusual appellation of cause, while 
causation, a given energy issuing in a given result, re- 
mains to be considered. An unsound view of the origin 
of causation is allowed to transform its very nature. 

Martineau, in common with many libertarians, unduly 
divides the unity of the mind in volition. He inquires : 
" Is there not a judging self, that knows and weighs the 
competing motives, over and above the agitated self that 
feels themf''\ ''When I judge my own act I feel sure 
that it is mine, and that, not in the sense that its necessi- 
tating antecedents were in my character, so that nothing 

* "A Study of Religion," vol. ii., p. 241. 
f Ibid.^ vol. ii., p. 227. 



288 ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

could prevent its coming, but in the sense that I might 
have betaken myself to a different act at the critical 
moment, when the pleadings were over and only the ver- 
dict remained." * 

This manner of putting the case hardly seems to express 
the facts. The mind and the flow of its phenomena are 
inseparable. Volition as volition has. a finality. Volition 
being completed, the mind does not remain in a position 
superior to the result, observant of it, and able to alter it. 
It has moved onward in the choice, and is identical with 
it. To assert this separation of the mind is to destroy 
the inner force and character of the movement as that of 
the whole man. If I have chosen truth, I have chosen 
it, and it does not lie with me, at the same instant, 
to reject it. Freedom is not found in the volatility, 
the reversibility, of the result, but in the manner in 
which it has been reached. There is no such other-self 
to audit the actions of the active self. Liberty lies in 
the fact that the rational movement by which questions 
of duty are resolved is one, in its on-going, of variable 
energies determined within themselves, in large part, 
both as to the direction and intensity of inquiry. This 
act of suspension and investigation may lie in continua- 
tion of lines of activity already assumed, or in modifica- 
tion of them, according as the mind, in its inner faithful- 
ness, is true to its own revealing power. The point of 
illumination "and genesis is not a focus of foreign activi- 
ties, but one of spiritual life. It is in the " pleadings " 
themselves, not in the power to reverse the conclusion 
reached by means of them, that freedom is achieved. 
The coherence and continuity of the mind are real, but 
its several states are united under, and subject to, its own 

* *' Types of Ethical Theory," vol. ii., p. 37. 



MARTINEAU. 289 

spontaneous rational power. Light within distinguishes 
mind from all other productive centres. 

The acuteness, fulness, and irresistible energy of the 
works of Martineau fit them to mark a turning-point in 
English philosophy. So, certainly, it must seem to those 
who hold that no philosophy is possible except through 
and by powers that hold a philosophy in their own action. 
To hope to reach a philosophy by an induction, a deposit 
of thought, foreign to the mind itself, seems an absurdity. 
This is to expect that results are to transcend all the 
powers that give rise to them. Reason in the mind is 
the first condition of a presence of rational relations in 
its own conceptions. If the light that is in us is dark- 
ness, let us succumb to it in silence. To contend against 
it is the clamor of fools. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

§ I. Though the empirical philosophy of England may 
be thought to lack depth and subtilty, it has been widely 
influential, both in direct extension and in calling out 
opposed systems. The most immediate and continuous 
movement of rejection occasioned by the nihilism of 
Hume Avas that which occurred in Scotland. Hume was 
not a type of his countrymen, and we have assigned his 
philosophy to England. It took a very important and 
coherent position in the development of English thought. 
His mind was comparatively colorless, and held itself 
ready, with a serene indifference, for any conclusion. The 
Scotch are generally devout and dogmatic, and exercise 
their shrewdness in defence of the ground they have 
already assumed, rather than in winning new positions. 
Philosophy is so dependent on the higher sentiments for 
its data that neither a coldly logical nor a w^armly defen- 
sive temper offers the best conditions of success in its 
pursuit. In- it, pure thought must penetrate a widely 
rational life. 

The first afifirmation of Scottish philosophy was that 
the common convictions of men were not to be summarily 
dismissed ; that general beliefs, with the intuitive elements 
involved in them, rested securely on common sense. The 
conclusions of common sense, the universal power of 



COMMON SENSE. 29I 

knowing, must be accepted in the face of all ingenious 
and crippling criticisms. It can hardly be doubted that 
this assertion, as a preparation for philosophy, is alto- 
gether sound. It is these very beliefs, the sum of what 
we accept as knowledge, that call for philosophy. Philos- 
ophy is neither less nor more than a comprehensive anal- 
ysis and formulation of these very truths which the ex- 
perience of men has gathered and confirmed. Philosophy 
is not competent to reject its own data. It may correct 
and enlarge them, but their essential validity is involved 
in the very inquiry into them, and in those powers by 
which it is to be pursued. If what mind has done is 
sound, then what it may do may also be sound. The 
postulate of all investigation is the soundness of our 
faculties — faculties common to all and essentially harmo- 
nious in their results. It was quite just, therefore, as a 
preliminary response, commanding fresh attention and 
waiting on farther investigation, to affirm that the doc- 
trines of Hume disproved themselves by being opposed 
to the universal convictions of men, by pulling down the 
entire edifice of knowledge. While this attitude is a dog;- 
matic one, as the mind in taking it is not fully ready to 
meet reason with reason, analysis with analysis, it is yet 
a sound one, because it wisely refuses to yield opinions 
which are sustained by a far broader experience that that 
which supports those which are endeavoring to supplant 
them. The mind can see and assert this much, off-hand 
— whatever are the difficulties in defining and defending 
fundamental beliefs, they are not as great as those which 
attend on their denial. Their denial is instant and hope- 
less confusion. Reason can at least say, that if philosophy 
is ultimately impossible, our safety lies in keeping close 
to the familiar and instinctive paths of thought. Indeed, 



292 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the scepticism of Hume led to this same assertion — abide 
in familiar places because they are familiar. 

The defects of Scottish philosophy have lain, not in 
this starting-point, but in the hesitating method of proced- 
ure which followed it. The dogmatic assertion of com- 
mon sense was put in the place of complete analysis, and 
left the mind resting on an unverified dogma — the direct 
knowledge of real being, both objective and subjective. 
This may seem but a slight failure, if, at the very end, 
we must still repose our faith on a faculty, and accept its 
affirmations as ultimate. In appealing to common sense, 
we are only doing in the gross what we do separately 
when we refer our convictions to a power of mind. Yet 
this is all the difference there is, or ever can be, between 
philosophy and the want of philosophy, science and the 
absence of science. In the one case, we accept complex 
results without being aware of the factors which compose 
them, and, in the other case, we lay open the factors and 
by them apprehend the composite product. Our knowl- 
edge is a knowledge of relations — not a relative knowledge 
— and as such involves first terms, positions assumed in 
the diagram and introductory to its constructive truth. 
Wise investigation results in a better and more simple 
assumption of these terms. 

§ 2. Thomas Reid (17 10), who gave the first impulse to 
Scottish philosophy, was professor, first at Aberdeen and 
later at the -University of Glasgow. The philosophy of 
Scotland has been closely associated with its universities, 
especially with the University of Edinburgh. The na- 
tional character has been tenacious enough to bind to- 
gether belief, knowledge, instruction. 

The scepticism of Hume and the idealism of Berkeley 
were almost equally unacceptable. The idealism, a direct 



REID. 293 

reference of all experience to God, came in as a possible 
conclusion only because of the unloosening of the ordinary 
ties of thought by the unbelief of Hume, and because it 
was one degree more acceptable than that unbelief. By 
a heroic act of faith a new sense of veracity was given 
to the flow of sensuous impressions. 

Reid was in diligent search of tenable grounds of oppo- 
sition, and failed to secure them with the distinctness 
and certainty attained by those who followed him. The 
scene necessarily shifted with the progress of thought, 
and it took time to discover the exact implications of the 
new position. 

The doctrine of common sense easily admits confusion. 
We may mean by it the general validity of human knowl- 
edge, its right, through all corrections and growth, to be 
accepted as the germ of truth ; or we may carry the term 
forward into our psychology, and designate that power of 
mind by which we apprehend regulative ideas as common 
sense. The two uses, though closely united, are very 
distinct, and it is unfortunate to confound them. To 
affirm, as against universal scepticism, the general valid- 
ity of knowledge, is a just preliminary to philosophy, 
since it simply states an antecedent assumption ; but to 
imply that any given faculty, like that of reason, is a 
function of common sense, and possesses its indorsement 
in each of its products, is inadmissible dogmatism. The 
existence of reason as a power of insight is a question of 
analysis, and the strength of our conclusions must rest on 
the clearness and accuracy of the analytic process. Scot- 
tish philosophy fell with Reid into this confusion, and 
has never wholly escaped from it. Admitting intuitive 
truths, and attaching great weight to them, it has not 
affirmed the reason as .an intuitive power with the dis- 



294 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tinctness it ought, nor given the ultimate truths involved 
in its action the free acceptance and full discussion it 
ought, nor made that constructive use of them for the 
sake of which they find admission. The movement, 
though slowly progressive, has been hesitating, uncer- 
tain, changeable, as if the new philosophy felt unduly the 
influences of empiricism, and was unwilling to break with 
it. The sensationalism of Locke cast a cold, benumbing 
shadow on many forms of belief which were striving to 
escape it. 

Reid did not fully clear himself on the first point, the 
nature of the appeal to common sense. First principles 
he regarded as divisible into two classes : contingent and 
necessary. The division between them is confused. In- 
stead of giving the exact universal ideas under which 
judgments arise, he gives the judgments which involve 
them. Judgments which imply the same ideas are placed 
in different classes. Under contingent principles, he puts 
the affirmation. The thoughts of which I am conscious 
are the thoughts of a being called myself ; and under 
necessary principles. The qualities which we perceive be- 
long to a subject which we call body ; those of which we 
are conscious belong to a subject which we call mind. 
He also places under necessary principles the belief. 
Whatever begins to exist must have a cause which pro- 
duced it. These propositions all seem to be of one 
order, and referrible to one ultimate idea, causation. The 
school has been especially timid in accepting and apply- 
ing this notion of causation. In this it retained the spirit 
of empiricism, forever playing between causation and 
sequence, affirming the latter and tacitly assuming re- 
sults referrible only to the former. Sequence can gain 
no significance without the deeper notion of causation. 



REID. 295 

Events lie as loosely in time as things in space, till they 
are woven together along the lines of effective forces. 

The second and most distinctive doctrine of Scottish 
philosophy is that of direct perception; the attainment 
by the mind in one indivisible act of phenomena, their 
object and their subject — the non-ego and the ego between 
which they lie. The obscurity and vacillation of Reid at 
this point have given rise to opposed opinions, whether 
he did, or did not, accept the doctrine. The better con- 
clusion seems to be that he afifirmed direct perception, 
but at times lost sight of it under the force of conflicting 
considerations. Direct perception is something quite 
other than "suggestion," by which occasionally he ex- 
plained our belief in an external world. Direct percep- 
tion accepts the last complex act of belief as primitive 
and simple, and so obscures all the processes of growth 
and the factors involved in them. No knowledge may 
seem more immediate than that by which the properties 
of an object reveal to us the object, or that which con- 
nects our own experiences with ourselves as their sub- 
jects. Yet this apparent simplicity must be accepted as 
the result of inseparable association, or all the relations 
of our powers to each other suffer confusion. The prop- 
erties of an object, the sensations it occasions, the object 
itself, are so intimately united as to constantly stand for 
each other. Yet, for purposes of thought, they are to 
be carefully distinguished. Our sensations are purely per- 
sonal experiences, referrible, under causation, to the prop- 
erties of objects external to the mind. Properties are the 
special energies by which these sensations are induced, 
and the object is the permanent union of these energies, 
of which sensations are the partial and passing expres- 
sion. The last two, properties and object, are an infer« 



296 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ence from sensations. They are reached by the interven- 
tion of rational powers. The first term of real knowledge 
is given, like all its terms, in and under reason. 

By direct knowledge we can only properly mean that 
which is the product of a single, simple act of mind ; by 
indirect knowledge, that which is reached by a complex 
act, one involving inference. Indirect knowledge is the 
fruit of previous direct knowledge. All direct knowledge 
must be intuitive. It can involve only a simple, primi- 
tive act of mind, containing within itself the entire prod- 
uct. A sensation is such an act. The recognition of a 
form element is such an act. Each of these constitutes 
a primitive experience, complete within itself, and wholly 
covered by consciousness. Such an experience is incapa- 
ble of any modification by inference. It belongs to this 
direct knowledge to be wholly included as an experience 
in consciousness. But consciousness is the form-element 
of mental phenomena. Nothing which is not phenomenal 
to mind can be embraced within consciousness. All direct 
knowledge is so embraced. If the object to which I refer 
a group of sensations were directly known it would be a 
phenomenon of mind. It remains to be inferred because 
it is exterior to mind, not a part of its own experience. 
I hear the voice of a friend who is not seen by me. I 
infer his presence, and his approach. My direct knowl- 
edge are the specific sensations, my indirect knowledge 
the inference's enclosed in them. The doctrine of direct 
perception supersedes the notion of causation, and so, if 
Avisely applied, cuts me off from real being. If my sen- 
sations, my mental experiences, contain the very object 
and the very subject to which they pertain, I have in 
the object and subject only phenomena. The power of 
inference, the great power of thought, is lost. A theory 



DIRECT PERCEPTION. 297 

introduced for the very purpose of escaping phenomenal- 
ism falls headlong into it. 

We have the two forms of knowing, direct and indirect^ 
a knowledge of phenomena, a knowledge of that of which 
they are the proof. All that we know directly is thereby 
shown to be phenomenal ; all that is known indirectly is 
transcendent, unphenomenal. The notion of causation 
puts us, by virtue of the power of inference it carries with 
it, in connection with the transcendental. The attributes 
involve the object, the powers the spirit. The region of 
noumena, entered only by inference, is the rational correl- 
ative of the region of phenomena, entered by a sensuous 
experience, and taken under the form-elements of mind. 
All the conditions of thought disappear, are merged in a 
mere flow of impressions, if we do not unite phenomena 
and hold them firm in permanent relations of dependence 
by virtue of the real being which, in reason, they are 
made to cover. The fundamental distinction of knowl- 
edge is, in its initiatory application, obliterated by the 
doctrine of direct perception. Sensations and objects, 
phenomena and noumena, personal experiences and spir- 
itual powers, all flow together in hopeless confusion. We 
can proceed, we certainly shall proceed, to undo, in later 
steps, the mischief we have wrought in our first assertion, 
but the inconsistency and obscurity of a false position 
will remain Avith us. 

If perception were direct, the object and the subject, 
both data of consciousness, would be as undeniable as 
thought, feeling, volition. No scepticism has proceeded 
to the length of denying the fact of feeling, thinking. 
We ought to be able to give, under this doctrine, an indi- 
cation of the quality or qualities of reality, the appearance 
of personality. This can only be done by wholly con- 



298 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

founding our sensations with objects, our impressions 
with personaHty. The doctrine of direct perception is 
nothing more than an obstinate piece of dogmatism, put 
in place of skilful analysis. The results are reached with 
no clear insight or just reason. 

Reid referred consciousness to a separate power, thus 
helping, in one more direction, an oversight of the funda- 
mental distinction involved in all phenomena ; each divis- 
ion, with its incommunicable form, physical facts declared 
in space, mental facts in consciousness. If consciousness 
is itself an additional power, then the habitual activities 
of mind, thought, and feeling do not contain light, may 
proceed in darkness, and wait to be lighted up by an act 
of consciousness. The reference of consciousness to a 
distinct power is a palpable instance of that form of ex- 
planation which escapes a difficulty by putting back of it 
a second example of the same difficulty. If the mind 
can, in one act — to wit, that of the power known as con- 
sciousness — be aware of its action, then may it be aware of 
all its actions. If it fails to recognize an act of thought, 
then it should also fail to apprehend one of consciousness. 
The Scottish philosophy makes a determined effort to 
break away from the meshes of empiricism, but carries 
much of the net with it. 

§ 3. Dugald Stewart (1753), professor in the University 
of Edinburgh, at a time when it included among its stu- 
dents many' who became distinguished in thought and 
action, presented the doctrines of Reid in a more concise 
and systematic form. He exerted great influence by the 
persuasive manner, profound conviction, and extended 
knowledge which he brought to his discussions. His 
hold upon his pupils was a vigorous one, and the revival 
of intuitive philosophy in France, under Jouffroy and Cou- 



BROWN. 299 

sin, is, in part, attributed to him. He not only failed, 
however, to carry the system forward to any higher and 
more defensible ground, he retreated somewhat toward 
empiricism. He reenforced the doctrine of association, — 
so easily and constantly used in reduction of mental 
powers — and was ready to find in it the secret of the 
space -relations of visible objects. The discussion of 
mental dependencies under the form of association is 
good or bad in the degree in which we regard association 
as an abbreviated mental process, or make it an expres- 
sion of underlying nervous connections. He betrayed 
the fundamental weakness of the Scottish school by a 
very inadequate treatment of causation. If we need, in 
any direction, to assert rational insight, it is in this direc- 
tion of causation, the invisible and fundamental relation 
of things. Nothing so weakens at once all mental grip as 
a slipping hold here. Stewart accepted Hume's reference 
of causation to sequence. This reference involves, at 
once, a great deal of illusory reasoning. We allow a uni- 
form sequence to impose upon the mind, through the ner- 
vous system, a habit of anticipation, and to be the ground 
of the actual return of impressions. But these results, if 
real, are themselves examples of causation. A true elim- 
ination of causation utterly disintegrates, alike, things 
and our thoughts concerning them. 

§ 4. Thomas Brown (1778) was associate professor with 
Stewart. He possessed the impressive power of Professor 
Stewart, and added to it more imagination. The negli- 
gent analysis of intuitive ideas and the consequent need- 
less and hasty inclusion of many empirical judgments 
with them, faults which have so frequently belonged to 
intuitive philosophy, showed their unfortunate results in 
Thomas Brown. Rightly dissatisfied with the wide ex- 



300 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tension of intuitions, he corrected the error by an unwise 
retreat from essential positions. If his concessions were 
admitted, there would be but little need, and hardly a 
possibility, of retaining any primitive terms. The phi- 
losophy of Thomas Brown indicated a decided return 
toward empiricism. He abandoned the doctrine of direct 
perception, identified causation with sequence, and laid 
still farther emphasis on association. 

§ 5. The person to whom Scottish philosophy has been 
preeminently indebted in its later development was Sir 
William Hamilton (1788), professor at Edinburgh. In 
erudition and influence he more than sustained the fame 
of those who had preceded him. Rarely have so many 
distinguished men stood in such close connection as did 
this group in Scotland. Hamilton helped to consolidate 
the school by restoring attention to the works of Reid, 
and by vindicating and completing his views. His ex- 
tended mastery of logic added to the force of his 
opinions. 

Hamilton lays great stress on the relativity of knowl- 
edge. We know things only in relation to our faculties. 
Both matter and mind in themselves are unknown. This 
assertion of the relativity of knowledge can be so used 
as to greatly limit and discredit it. The assertion finds 
its chief support in perception, and indicates the weight 
attached to sensations in knowledge. Our impressions 
are experiences within ourselves, and do not, it is said, 
disclose things as they are in themselves. We are only 
dealing with subjective conceptions, and cannot say how 
far these correspond with realities. We shall have occa- 
sion to consider this point more fully in connection with 
Kant, in whose philosophy it plays an important part. 

Passing this connection of phenomena with the causes 



HAMILTON. 301 

which occasion them, we are still to remember that that 
which constitutes the bulk of our knowledge, as a rational 
product, is not phenomenal, but an apprehension of the 
relations between phenomena. This knowledge is not viti- 
ated by the relativity of our sensations, any more than the 
meaning of a sentence is modified because it is written in 
an unusual hand. If our sensations are true to them- 
selves, if they correspond with themselves under similar 
circumstances, then, in spite of their relativity, they may 
convey to us the exact truth of relations. The principles 
of mathematics are identical in all minds, and yet are 
reached by symbols very different. Two persons can 
play with each other a game of chess on different boards, 
at a distance, and with no agreement in sensuous data. 
All that is requisite is the suggestion to each of like rela- 
tions, and any presentation that preserves the symbolism 
of dependencies, no matter how meagre in itself, suffices 
for the purposes of thought. Empiricism, making our 
knowledge wholly an affair of sensations, attaches great 
importance to the dogma of relativity, as if all knowledge 
suffered taint by its subjective character. If relativity 
were true to the degree in which it is asserted, we should 
be wholly subject to individual impressions, and our 
efforts to arrive at truth, the same for all, would be abor- 
tive. The identity of truth with itself would become an 
illusion of minds filled with illusions. We break this 
charmed circle of relativity by virtue of an insight into 
permanent relations, aside from the objects between 
which they exist. The diversity in our symbols of 
thought carries with it no corresponding diversity in 
the thought itself. 

The fruit of this doctrine of the incapacity of the mind 
for absolute knowledge is seen in Hamilton's presentation 



302 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of the Infinite. The Infinite cannot be known by us. 
And yet he makes God an object of faith. Thus, in 
the most fundamental form of belief, we have the riddle 
put upon us of believing in God without knowing him. 
Knowing must, under this use of language, mean some 
particular form or degree of apprehension. If we have 
absolutely no apprehension, we have no object of faith. 
In this discussion Hamilton involves himself in all the 
confusion which arises in connection with the word con- 
ceive, as interpreted by sensationalism. We cannot con- 
ceive the Infinite. We cannot conceive free will. But 
conceive means, in empiricism, a return of phenomenal 
impressions, and impressions are the ultimate terms of 
truth. Certainly, we cannot conceive the Infinite. It 
would be absurd to suppose that we could entertain a 
phenomenal impression of God. To be able to conceive a 
thing, that is, to offer it under sensuous terms, and to know 
a thing, are not equivalent assertions in any philosophy 
but one grossly empirical. The weakness of empiricism 
lies just here, in the forced equivalence it establishes be- 
tween impressions and true knowledge, divergent from 
each other by their entire breadth. The mind receives — 
knows in an inferior sense — phenomena phenomenally. 
These phenomena it can restore, conceive. It knows 
truth, itself unphenomenal, unphenomenally, and this 
truth it cannot conceive. " We cannot conceive a free 
act," because the notion of freedom expounds the de- 
pendence of acts, and is not itself an act. If, however, 
we cannot know freedom, nor know God, neither Hamil- 
ton nor another can induce us to believe in them. What 
is it, pray, that we are believing in ? 

The doctrine of direct perception, as held by Hamilton, 
is especially unsatisfactory, taken in connection with his 



HAMILTON. 303 

assertion of the relativity of knowledge. The ego and 
the non-ego are given together by consciousness in " abso- 
lute coequality." Yet our knowledge does not extend to 
realities, either in the physical or the spiritual world. 
The phenomena, therefore, of sensation, instead of being 
homogeneous impressions at one with themselves, consist 
of perfectly distinguishable elements, elements yielded on 
the one side by matter and on the other side by mind. 
Here is endless difificulty. Consciousness does not seem, 
except to a Scottish philosopher, to contain such sepa- 
rable impressions in a recognizable form, any more than 
water offers hydrogen and oxygen as divisible phenomena. 
Nor is it in the least plain how physical phenomena, with 
distinguishable physical characteristics, can be permeated 
with consciousness, the form- element of mental states. 
Nor is it any more plain how, by virtue of these recogni- 
zable phenomena, we can reach an external object without 
an inference. Scottish philosophy has been slow, full of 
hesitancy and uncertainty, in using the weapons it won 
by an acceptance of primitive terms. It still strives to 
win from sensation that which is not in it, and this only 
that it may cripple insight. It Avill neither rest at the 
base, nor ascend to the summit, of the hill, but attempts 
to maintain a slippery foothold along its steep incline. 

Hamilton reduces association to one connection, that 
of redintegration. Those impressions restore each other 
which have once been united. The question returns upon 
us whether this fact is an ultimate one, to be accepted in 
explanation of special facts, or whether it marks an agree- 
ment between phenomena, each with its owm grounds. 
There is no universal law, no general force, of redintegra- 
tion. An action once performed, a union once accom- 
plished, does not, by an intrinsic necessity, repeat itself. 



304 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Skill, habit, rest on an ultimate tendency in a certain por- 
tion of the nervous system, in its relation to the muscular 
system, to favor repetition. Memory, among mental 
powers, in a way its own, is also an example of restored 
impressions. Are these two facts, increasing ease of mus- 
cular action and the return in the mind of previous ex- 
periences, examples of the same thing, or do they remain 
distinct, with distinct adaptations ? The thoughts, in 
like manner, by virtue of their logical coherence, tend to 
restore each other. Is association a deeper force common 
to all these facts, or is it an agreement between facts, 
each of its own order, in a single feature ? As long as 
these questions are left unanswered association is a substi- 
tution of a verbal generalization for mental powers. We 
say, as above, that a single thought tends to restore a 
logical succession, but a logical succession is the product 
only of a logical power, working a specific result. 

Among the most characteristic features of the philos- 
ophy of Hamilton is his law of the conditioned. He 
brings it forward in explanation of causation, and the 
notion of the infinite. The law is that the conceivable — 
the term is to be taken in its sensuous force — lies between 
two extrernes, equally inconceivable. The mind, there- 
fore, is conditioned to this middle ground. In the case 
of causation, we can neither conceive events as without a 
beginning, nor with one. We can only conceive them as 
perpetually springing from previous events, and giving 
rise to subsequent ones. The law of the conditioned, as 
urged by Hamilton, is a good example of the hold which 
an ingenious device gains upon the mind which originates 
it. If we understand, as we should, by the conceivable 
that which can be constructed in the mind, — in the imagi- 
nation — then it is not true that events cannot be conceived 



HAMILTON. 305 

detached from other events, their causes or their effects. 
It is characteristic of dreams, in which the imagination 
has free play, that events come and go in the most abrupt 
and incongruous way, with Httle relation to fitting causes 
or suitable effects. If we make the word conceive equiva- 
lent to comprehension, an act of reason and not of imagi- 
nation, then it is true that each event demands a prior 
event on which to rest. But this demand is not the occa- 
sion of causation, it is the consequence of causation. It 
is simply the push of reason, in each instance, under this 
notion. The mind is not satisfied by an indefinite reces- 
sion of causes backward, and a meaningless movement 
forward, because of the constant activity of reason in 
search of a comprehending idea. The mind will not rest, 
being rational, till reason lies back of all things, and em- 
braces them all. As association is the product of specific 
powers, and not the specific power the product of associa- 
tion, so the notion of causation is the ground of the in- 
quisitive recession of the mind, and not the recession, as 
an impotency of the imagination, the occasion of causation. 
Hamilton discusses intuitive truth under the head of 
the regulative faculty. Existence, space, and time are 
accepted as primitive form -elements. Most of his 
strength, however, is expended in deducing causality 
and the infinite from the law of the conditioned — the 
limits within which the mind works — rather than in an 
effort to define the insight of reason. Herein is shown 
the weakness of the school to which he belongs, a dis- 
position to leave its own fundamental assertion, and the 
fundamental assertion of philosophy, in a hazy, uncer- 
tain, changeable light. The reluctance with which this 
conviction is conceded, and its vague, variable quality, 
have always made against Scottish philosophy. This phi- 
20 



3o6 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

losophy planted itself on realism, and opposed, with much 
vigor, the unbelief involved in materialism and idealism. 
It, above all, needed, therefore, in making its ground clear 
and defensible, a sharp and complete enumeration of prim- 
itive principles, and a fearless reliance on them for their 
own proper work. It has failed in both of these particu- 
lars. It has done little to determine the range of intui- 
tion, and, in its doctrine of direct perception, has robbed 
the reason, in a thoroughly inadmissible way, of its most 
important function. The fundamental question of reali- 
ties calls for all the resources of the mind in its settlement. 
To cripple our powers here is a fatal error. The existence 
of subject and object, a world within and without beneath 
the flow of phenomena, is a complex belief, the product 
of all the strength and all the experience of the spirit. 

§ 6. A test question in philosophical tendencies is that 
of the nature of virtue. Is the ultimate law of conduct 
a result of insight, or simply of susceptibility? Does 
reason lay down for itself a law of action, as it does a 
law of truth, under given circumstances, or does the en- 
vironment impress upon the mind, through its liability to 
pain and pleasure, a method of action ? 

These two things, external conditions and internal 
powers, act and react on each other, run parallel with 
each other, in a very complex way ; but the declaration 
of law must rest with one or the other of them. Empiri- 
cism makes outside influences, in their relation to inner 
sensibilities, the source of law ; intuitionalism makes it an 
assertion of reason in the presence of existing facts. The 
effective force, in the one case, acts from without inward, 
in the other, from within outward. Under the one law, 
material influences shape spiritual ones; under the other 
law, spiritual forces, more and more, win the mastery over 



ETHICS. 307 

physical ones. In either case, there is a tedious develop- 
ment, but the plastic power in its origin offers a distinct 
difference. 

The Scottish philosophy has shown its timid, half-way 
character, its inadequate sense of its own resources, in this 
question of morals. Adam Smith (1723) develops the 
principles of virtue from that sympathy which enables us 
to enter into the feelings of others, and so to construct 
motives and laws of conduct broadly in their universal 
bearings. The process is thus made to conceal the primi- 
tive factors which take part in it — the universal method 
of empiricism. 

Adam Ferguson (1724) makes the laws of virtue the 
product of the character of man, as united in develop- 
ment with his fellow-men. Attention is directed to the 
conditions under which the moral nature unfolds, rather 
than to the essential term in this correlation, the moral 
nature itself. 

Sir James Mackintosh (1765) insists on the absolute 
authority of conscience, and yet is ready to make it rest 
exclusively on benevolence. He very justly draws atten- 
tion to the slow way in which the decisions of our moral 
nature are built up under experience, but does not suffi- 
ciently recognize the core of intelligence, which alone 
makes this movement fruitful. Ethics is so broad a sub- 
ject that it may gain by many discussions in themselves 
very partial. 

Henry Calderwood, Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
the University of Edinburgh, in his " Handbook of Moral 
Philosophy," offers a very favorable example of the ethi- 
cal theories of this school in their present form. He in- 
volves the supreme law of the mind in the mind itself. 
" Conscience is reason discovering universal truth — having 



308 SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the authority of sovereign moral law, and affording the 
basis of present obligation." He unites this power to 
apprehend and enforce truth with a wise use of those 
physical terms of spiritual life which empirical philosophy 
has been so active in disclosing and enforcing. Empiri- 
cism has done much to establish the unity of the world. 
It has accomplished this by showing that the physical 
terms of our constitution and of the world which encloses 
us so far favor, under our conjoint social development, 
our spiritual life, that they can, with much plausibility 
be made the productive causes of it. The soil of the 
world and the climate of the world are not hostile to 
plants of righteousness. So far are they from this, that 
they nourish within us a moral growth whose occasions 
must, in many ways, be referred to them. A great deal 
of theology and not a little philosophy have regarded the 
world as hostile to spiritual development. It has fallen 
to empiricism, under, the doctrine of evolution, to correct 
this unfortunate assertion. The two extremes, physical 
and spiritual, should be weighed with each other, and 
prepare us to accept a close and living unity in the world. 
The soil, the atmosphere, the plant ; the motives, the 
man, the community, stand in inseparable interplay with 
each other. A dualism that is simply diversity, action 
and reaction, is a condition of growth. A dualism that 
deepens into antagonism divides the world beyond hope 
of rational exposition. 

Empiricism has done most necessary and admirable 
work in pointing out the abundant ministrations of the 
physical world in the progress of events to our higher 
life. We are able, holding fast that life, to give it, under 
these conditions of development, much wider, deeper, and 
more coherent relations. 



i 



ETHICS. 309 

One cannot fail to attach high value to the philosophi- 
cal discussions in the universities of Scotland. This phi- 
losophy has not, however, fully understood its own posi- 
tion, nor developed its own resources with coherence and 
confidence. It has allowed itself to constantly fall under 
the shadow of empiricism. The valuable results of em- 
piricism can best be gathered up by a system that breaks 
at once and finally with it as a philosophy, and heartily 
accepts it as method of inquiry. No midway ground is 
open. Intuitionalism, constructive realism, is the point 
of union between materialistic and idealistic tendencies. 
It is higher ground, which draws readily to itself all that 
is true in both forms of thought. Scottish philosophy 
has done much to lead men to this land of realities, but 
itself took only a timid and unsafe possession of it. 



CHAPTER V. 

PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

§ I. Though America has made some positive contribu- 
tions to philosophy, they have been isolated, and limited 
in influence. They have lain chiefly in the direction of 
more clear and consistent intuitionalism. America has 
usually been, in philosophy, a remote annex of England 
and Scotland. In its early history theological influences 
determined the form, duration and degree of speculative 
thought. While this fact has brought some limitations 
to philosophy, it has more than compensated for them 
by the social life and national strength which have 
accompanied it. 

Jonathan Edwards (1703), whose influence was pre- 
eminently that of a most sturdy, devout, and inexorable 

^theologian, did some very sharp, aggressive, and influential 
work in philosophy. His line of thought attached itself 
to English empiricism. In early life he studied the works 

"■of Locke with the pleasure which '' a man feels when 
gathering up handfuls of gold." His '' Treatise on the 
Will " says about all that can be said in favor of necessary 
connections in choice and conduct. His theology, full of 

^ threat, needed only the clanking of the chains of causal 
connections to make it diabolical. Fortunately the un- 
belief of modern empiricism no longer knots together the 
terms of virtue and vice, good-will and ill-will, in the 



EDWARDS. 3H 

meshes of a net that drags us onward in the train of Om- 
nipotence, under the strain of spiritual sentiments that find 
no true, sincere response in the world about us. There 
may be conditions of belief under which it is a relief to 
be without faith. 

The treatise of President Edwards on the Will has been 
often regarded as unanswerable. So it is, if we base our 
discussion on the notion of causation, and thus involve 
the result in our first assumptions. We might as well 
forbear argument, and afifirm at once the universality of 
causation ; for this is the issue to which all consideration 
of the processes included under it must lead us. Regard 
the mind as an energy, and motives as energies operative 
upon it, and the resultant in action must be involved in 
the terms we have accepted. Under such a supposition, 
the ability to move in either of two directions would 
leave the actual movement, in one of them, unexplained. 
It would be an effect with no determining cause. Presi- 
dent Edwards's work is far more laborious than his prem- 
ises required it to be. 

The relation of the mind as pure intelligence to its own 
activity is so remote from the relation of forces to their 
method of expression, that the one cannot be made to 
illustrate the other without hopeless confusion of thought. 
To term the will a " causal energy " is to prejudge the 
question of liberty. The same difificulty reappears in the 
argument for the being of God, as a first cause. Cause 
and effect are absolutely reciprocal. They exactly meas- 
ure each other. The cause can in no way transcend the 
effect. If it does, it is by so much more than a cause. 
The effect is the instant, constant, complete expression 
of the cause, its measure in phenomenal being. If we 
distinguish between noumena and phenomena, causes are 



312 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

the noumena which accompany and sustain phenomena, 
the substantial being which they represent to human in- 
teUigence. If we do not distinguish the two, these causes 
and effects are constantly interchangeable. What in one 
relation is an effect is in another a cause. It is not pos- 
sible, therefore, either for the mind of man or of God to 
become a term in these endless connections without at 
once sinking into the circle of forces, an equal constituent 
with other constituents revolving in it. We cannot, with 
any clearness of thought, recognize some causes which 
are more or less than other causes — which stand in some 
superior relation to them. There cannot be a more fun- 
damental distinction than that of lying within, and lying 
without, this circle of causation. If mind is a ^' causal 
energy," we cannot rescue it from the terms of causation, 
which are of the most absolute and universal order. If we 
believe in liberty, we must interpret the words " causal 
energy," not as an energy that sustains causal relations, 
but one that from its own nature is able to act, and to act 
on causal forces. 

Force is wholly physical. It has locality and directions 
of action. As applied to mind, it is purely figurative. The 
force of thought is as much beyond space relations as is 
thought itself. The forces which are contained in the 
nervous and muscular organization of the human body 
constitute a complete circle by themselves. They respond 
to each other,- correlate with each other and with other 
physical forces. The energy of the mind no more finds 
entrance into the closed circle than does the operator in 
telegraphy in the electric circuit. The stroke of the fin- 
ger is a condition in completing that circuit, but yields no 
energy involved in it. The activities of the brain run 
parallel with those of the mind, and sustain a quantitative 



i 



EDWARDS. 313 

connection with them. There is, however, no proof of 
likeness, or interchange in action, between them. These 
may be assumed as a means of escaping the ultimate 
term, the inscrutable dependence of the two, but are 
assumed wholly without proof. Instead of finding our- 
selves helped by such a supposition, the entire problem 
is confounded and lost. Instead of explaining mental 
action, we have missed it entirely, identified it with that 
physical activity which, by contrast, has hitherto defined 
it for us. The duck has disappeared below the surface ; 
where it will rise again we cannot say, but when it does 
rise it will be as far from our hand as ever. In our experi- 
ence we are compelled to accept, without any intermediate 
term, the interaction of the nervous system and of the ^ 
mind. The two terms are not reducible either to neural 
or to mental action. Beyond our experience, we accept, 
in theism, the fact of a much wider relation, somewhat 
akin to this, the relation of Eternal Reason to the uni-^ 
verse of physical forces, at play under it in entire depend- 
ence on it. 

In neither case can we let the lower relation in any 
way expound or strike into the higher one. Mind is nof^ 
a cause. God is not a cause. Neither of them is a force. '^ 
Both of them have a mastery over forces. If we wish to 
discuss liberty, we must turn our back on causation to be- 
gin with. We must contemplate the mind as a pure intel- 
lectual agent, pursuing truth under its own law, and then 
conforming its action to it. This spontaneous action of 
the mind toward and under the truth is, in every way, as 
intelligible as is the action of causes in the expenditure 
of the energy they contain. Both are perfectly intelligible 
terms of the reason, so intelligible that it instantly and 
constantly supplies the one and the other in dealing with 



314 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

the complex problem of existence that lies before it. The 
two are the foci of thought, and all the relations of its 
ellipse lie between them. Allow them to merge in each 
other, and our distinctive propositions disappear. We 
can no more move in the mental world, till we are content 
to accept these differences, than we can walk without 
both limbs. 

If the relation of the mind to force now presented is 
correct, and the energy of the mind is not force, we can- 
not by consciousness arrive at force. Force is not only 
not contained in the phenomena of mind, it is not held 
in its noumena. Existence is here throughout spiritual, 
and comes under spiritual laws. The argument for liberty 
is really finished before President Edwards commences 
his work. It turns on the manner in which we unfold 
the map of knowledge, the fields we make it cover, the 
territory we assign to truth. An empirical configuration 
of mental convictions necessarily excludes liberty. 
- President Edwards, in his ethics, went far to anticipate 
the doctrine of Bentham. The rule of action is the love 
of being in general, an expression more comprehensive 
than the greatest good of the greatest number. It in- 
cludes, in the purview of action, animal life and the divine 
life. The phrase did not lie as near the experience of 
men, is not as human, and therefore was not as taking, 
as that of Bentham. The omnipotence, the fulness, of 
the Divine Being were the ruling conception in the mind 
of Edwards ; and it seemed to him a small thing to thrust 
aside human liberty when it offered any obstruction to 
the absolute methods of God. He conceived God first, 
and shaped his works to the conception. He secured the 
sense of elevation there by that of debasement here. The 
more just idea, the wisdom and goodness of God visible 



McCOSH. 3 1 5 

in his works, was alien to his theology. The very devout 
and pure character of President Edwards shows how 
small a part correctness of thought may play in conduct. 

§ 2. Scottish philosophy has been most frequently the 
philosophy taught and expounded in the colleges of the 
United States. Dr. Noah Porter (i8ii), of Yale College, 
has given it extended re-statement. Dr. James McCosh, 
of Princeton University, has been its able and constant 
defender. He has been especially ready to accept the 
truths of evolution, and to fortify psychology with the 
physiological facts associated with it. He has not, how- 
ever, made any progress in untangling the central en- 
tanglements of the school to which he belongs. He is 
fully involved in all the perplexities of the doctrine of 
direct perception. We look directly, he affirms, on a 
material object. Whether within the body or without it, 
there is an extended object immediately perceived. All 
knowledge obtained through the senses is out of and 
beyond the perceiving mind. In self-consciousness, we 
know the thinking self. We know force intuitively ; we 
know objects as exercising force on us, and ourselves as 
exercising force on them. We hold, in intuition, body 
without and self within. 

There is something very surprising in these assertions. 
If they were true, they would not need to be made. Yet 
they are made in the face of almost all philosophy, materi- 
alistic, idealistic, and intuitive ; and made on the evidence 
of consciousness, which should render them self-evident. 
They admit of no argument. They bring philosophy to 
a halt by an absolute dogma. They raise the doubt 
whether consciousness is one and the same to us all in its 
primitive data. If it is not, there is no basis for philos- 
ophy. Is it possible that it only requires repeated affir- 



3l6 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

matlon and two or three generations of descent to alter the 
data of experience, and impose an arbitrary dogma on 
the mind as a primitive truth ? Is the empiricist correct 
in his assertion that belief is a kind of habit? Am I com- 
pelled, in confronting such a belief as this of direct per- 
ception, to fall back on the personal pronoun ; to confess 
as a weakness the fact that I am able to see neither the 
spirit nor the things with which it deals, nor the efficient 
connections that lie between them ? Are there in mind, 
as in the mineral kingdom, pockets, containing deposits 
of the most perfect crystals, that are withdrawn from the 
veins with which they are associated ? Is Scottish philos- 
ophy such a pocket, with flashes of light and revelations 
of truth, which the rest of us cannot hope to share? If 
one should say of an obscure sentence in an obscure lan- 
guage, " I see its meaning ; it is not a subject of inquiry, 
but one of direct sight ; " the assertion would not be more 
perplexing than this of direct perception. The distinc- 
tion between noumena and phenomena is almost univer- 
sal ; yet here noumena and phenomena are alike present, 
on the same terms, in direct vision. 

The intuitionalist and the empiricist agree that there 
are interpreting ideas involved in all our knowledge, as 
the idea of space in vision. The question between them 
is whether the idea, as that of space, comes to the mind 
slowly, as a result of the composite action of the facts 
before it, or" whether it is involved in the mind's own 
action from the outset. Does the optic nerve eliminate 
light under its own experience, or does that experience 
turn, from the beginning, on the presence of light? But 
here comes a philosophy which sets aside this discussion 
in the most decisive way, which fearlessly asserts. We 
know bodies as extended in sensation ; extension is part 



McCOSH. 317 

and parcel of sensation. One holds his breath under 
such an affirmation. All past thought goes for nothing. 
Growth, perception, as the products of abbreviated proc- 
esses, disappear, and the last action of the mind, to 
which all its powers have for long been contributing, is 
put down as primary and absolute. We must set aside 
this assertion of a special Scotch consciousness, in spite 
of the embarrassment we feel in doing it, as the only 
condition under which we can possibly preserve philoso- 
phy, and philosophy we must preserve. If our data are 
not common, our thoughts never can be. 

The Scottish philosophy fell back, as we think justly, 
on common sense, general conviction, as a defence against 
that scepticism which was scattering all the stores of 
knowledge. Having done this, it blundered at once in 
its analysis. In the doctrine of direct perception there is 
a dogmatic assertion of a personal experience which bids 
defiance to philosophy, sets at naught some of its sound- 
est conclusions, and reaches a result the equivalent of the 
doctrine it strove to escape, that ultimate terms lie as 
irreconcilable impressions in different minds. If the fun- 
damental processes by which we acquire knowledge can 
be laid down for us in this absolute manner, then recon- 
ciliation is hopeless. Contradictory affirmations are re- 
ferred directly to consciousness, and there is an end. 

The effect which this doctrine must have on the intui- 
tions, the exposition and defence of which were the proper 
service of Scottish philosophy, is plain. If we know ex- 
tension as the product of sense, if we have an '^ immediate 
acquaintance with time " as an outer reality, if we come 
in direct contact with force, then space, time, causation, 
are the most direct generalizations of experience. The 
intuitive terms of mind become as perplexed as its per- 



3l8 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

ceptive ones, and we are back on an empiricism grosser 
than that we were endeavoring to displace. If we can 
feel force, see extension, be conscious of time, then our 
perceptions are directly inclusive of all the objects of 
knowledge. 

The confusion which arises when the physical and men- 
tal elements are thus blended in direct perception is farther 
seen in the doctrine of association. Dr. McCosh places 
it on neither limb decisively, but plants it on both. There 
are mental grounds for it, as contiguity, and also physical 
grounds, as the nature of brain cells. Can a pure mental 
state be subject to a double law, one branch of it physical 
and another mental ? A complex intellectual process 
must be consistent with itself throughout, and the law 
which governs it wholly coherent. If a physical series of 
causes can give the dependencies of a purely mental 
product, we have occasion to go no farther. Parts, and 
parts of so diverse an order, cannot go together in a final 
philosophy. 

§ 3. President Mark Hopkins (1802), so long a distin- 
guished teacher of mental science, entertained the Scottish 
philosophy in a modified form. He did not accept the 
doctrine of a direct knowledge of the external world in 
perception, but thought that we gain, in one act, a recog- 
nition of two opposing forces, mental and physical, in 
connection with muscular activity — an inroad of force 
from without, and our resistance to it. The question is 
not much altered by this transfer of the point of determi- 
nation. We are still called on to know the unphenomenal 
term which we call force directly, to separate between 
two conflicting forces, the one arising within the field of 
spiritual being and the other without it. We shall not 
make much progress in philosophy till we learn to distin- 



HICKOK. 319 

guish between the strength of a crowbar and the strength 
of a desire, the push of a purpose and the push of an ele- 
phant, the grip of conscience and the grip of the right 
hand, the sensations wliich accompany muscular effort 
and the energy produced by it, the force due to exertion 
and the mental states which occasion it ; and also that in 
all these cases the force is an inference of the experience 
and not a part of it. Dr. Hopkins, having thus accepted 
a direct knowledge of force as force, finds no occasion for 
the notion of causation as a primitive idea. The mind 
already drops, in muscular experience, plumb to the 
bottom of things. 

§ 4. The works of Laurens P. Hickok (1798) are fresh 
and valuable contributions to philosophy. He gave con- 
sistent and proportionate expression to primitive terms, 
and put them unreservedly at their proper, constructive 
work. The element of insight in all intellectual action is 
clearly expressed by him. The sense, the understanding, 
and the reason are distinctly assigned their appropriate 
and correlative parts in mental activity. The overshadow- 
ing feeling of rational power leads him to a somewhat 
terse and narrow expression of sensuous experiences, but 
the real relation of powers is clearly defined. His ''Men-' 
tal Science " and his " Moral Science " have been stimu- 
lating books in the hands of all instructors who have ap- 
prehended their scope. In his " Rational Psychology " 
he has discussed the foundations of belief in the two dis- 
tinct forms of being, physical and mental, and, in spite of 
a strong idealistic tendency, has presented most compre-'' 
hensively the grounds of universal knowledge. His 
works have been profoundly influential, and would have-^ 
been broadly so were it not for a technical style which 
makes the first approach to them difficult and disagree- 



320 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

able. He also, under the idealistic impulse, attempted a 
speculative exposition of the universe. The effort has 
little to commend it beyond its ingenuity. This suffices 
to beget a thin twilight, a lustrous moonshine, in which 
we seem to see many things very delightfully, but appre- 
hend nothing distinctly and finally. The speculation 
illustrates a chronic weakness of intuitionalism, the ex- 
travagance of the a priori method. This itch of absolute 
and universal exposition he caught from German phi- 
losophy. 

-^ With an admirable balance of mind and a most beauti- 
ful balance of character, Dr. Hickok lacked that empirical 
knowledge and habit of empirical inquiry, that modest 
estimate of theories, that profound sense of the sufficiency 
and contiguity of things, which must be united to a free 
recognition of intellectual powers in order that knowledge 
may be real and full-orbed. 

Most of the expositions of ethics in this country, arising 
in connection with the timid claims and half-way conces- 
sions of Scottish philosophy, have been of an unequal, 
incongruous order. They have sought to reconcile ex- 
perience and insight as sources of authority. The theory 
of Dr. Hopkins, that blessedness is the ultimate ground 
of duty, is a favorable example. A distinction is made in 
pleasures, which, after all, cannot be sustained without a 
prior recognition of moral vision. Few have been able 
to find, in" the manifold teachings of experience, simply 
the indispensable conditions under which the inner life is 
called out. Dr. Hickok was a delightful exception to 
this general tendency. If he fails to render the full force 
of empirical circumstances — and most do thus fail — he 
leaves a place for them, and a most adequate place, since 
they minister to divine power in us. When all fruitage 



FISKE. 321 

shall be felt to be a fruitage of the earth, yet rising above 
it, in momentary interplay with a heavenly atmosphere 
and all the energies of light, we shall be able to reconcile 
the two terms of life, empirical and primitive. The pupils 
of Dr. Hickok will all reverently acknowledge that his 
words had in them more of the vivifying forces of heaven 
than of the fertilizing ingredients of the soil. 

§ 5. The speculations of Spencer have been well pre- 
sented and supported in the " Systematic Philosophy " by 
John Fiske. All that clearness, conciseness, and compre- 
hensiveness can add to these theories, he has added. 
Empiricism has somewhat less hold in America, because 
of a comparative freedom from religious intolerance. 
Just now^ the religious world seems to be ready to accept, 
with a kind of gratitude, the additional life John Fiske 
has kindly breathed into the Unknown. Some minds 
climb up with more satisfaction along the narrow and 
difficult path of empiricism to a point which gives a little 
of the outlook of faith, than that which they experience 
in ascending, under a divine call, all their powers with 
them, into the mount of God. 

Physiological psychology has been pushed forward, in 
its experimental researches, by G. Stanley Hall. The 
disposition — a disposition which always intervenes when 
scientific inquiry, ceasing to be subordinate to philosophy, 
presses to the front — to lay stress on the physical terms 
of our being is increasingly manifest. It is seen in the 
use of such a text-book as Sully's " Psychology," which 
passes lightly the questions involved in philosophy, and 
deals fully with the physical and physiological conditions 
which influence the mental powers. We are compelled 
to pay for an excess in one direction by a corresponding 
excess in the opposite direction. 
21 



322 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

A remarkably fresh and full presentation of mental 
science, on its physiological and phenomenal side, has 
been made by Professor William James, in his '' Psychol- 
ogy." He brings to his work large resources of knowledge 
and much acuteness. One must admire the insight and 
ingenuity of his labor, though they are more frequently 
expended on the modes, means, and even abnormal inci- 
dents of mental processes than on the very substance of 
those processes. The measurable accompaniment has, 
in his mind, an advantage over the spiritual activity 
which alone gives it significance. 

§ 6. The idealism of Germany has a tenacious, but very 
limited, hold in the United States. The School of Philos- 
ophy at Concord, chiefly under the direction of William T. 
Harris, gave for a time a visible expression to these theo- 
ries, though not one widely influential. " Metaphysics, a 
Study of First Principles," by Borden P. Bowne, Professor 
of Philosophy in the Boston University, is a very incisive, 
vigorous, and independent contribution to dialectics. Its 
conclusions rest wholly with intuitionalism. Empiricism, 
as a form of philosophy, suffers scornful and scathing 
attack. Its doctrine of the relation between the physical 
and the spiritual world is one very unusual in America. 
" The impersonal is simply and solely process and law. 
Permanence and proper existence can be found only in 
spirit." " Persons are capable of proper existence, but 
things, in the common sense of the term, are not." We 
have, as yet, had little occasion to consider the class of 
conclusions to which these assertions belong. We shall 
find ample opportunity when we reach German philos- 
ophy. We merely draw attention to the fact that this 
belief is at war with the earliest and latest convictions of 
experience, by which the phenomena that occur respect- 



BOWNE. 323 

ively in space and in consciousness are discriminated from 
each other. That which we construct as an external 
world is here regarded as a product of mind simply. One- 
half the cosmos becomes, if not an illusion, something 
very like one, an unsuspected and immediate product of 
the other half. We thus escape what has been thought 
to be the mystery of mysteries, the interaction of the two, 
but we do it, as in so many other examples, by annihilat- 
ing the problem. We have also the insuperable difficulty 
of declaring knowledge, in half its accumulated conclu- 
sions, false. Our two firm elements, space and conscious- 
ness, are not, as we have always supposed, distinct in the 
kinds of being involved in them. We retain the shadow 
of physical things, but this shadow will hardly offer a 
solid field over which to lengthen the cords and strengthen 
the stakes of the tabernacle of all truth. There is, in this 
doctrine, an elevation of mind that debases it. There is 
a presence of God which humiliates him. We are too 
much alone to be great. The angel of revelation can 
hardly stand again, with his. right foot on the sea and his 
left foot on the land, planted firmly in the majesty of 
power. The reality of the universe is its true extension. 
Without it, the universe and our thoughts about it col- 
lapse, like a bubble. Our thought alone is too thin a 
film to distend and sustain the world. 

American development is passing into that stage which 
is most likely to yield speculative inquiry, and this under 
conditions of breadth, potency, and humanity which 
promise to keep it close to the facts of life, aloof from 
theories that are driven, as unmanageable balloons, along 
waste, undefinable fields of air. It is sometimes said that 
America has produced no system of philosophy. The 
disparagement of our speculative power intended in the 



324 PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICA. 

remark may, in part, hold ; yet it is an assertion of very 
little wisdom. We and the world with us least of all 
need another philosophy. What we and all truly need is 
a sweeping away of a dozen philosophies already in being, 
by a process of correction and reconciliation. We need 
to clear the spaces of our solar system from the meteoric 
scraps of construction, that we may see how far the work 
of creation has progressed. There is very little invention, 
but an immense range of vision, in sound philosophy. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

5 I. French character has shown itself very distinctly 
in French philosophy. The data of speculative inquiry 
have been quickly accepted, and boldly developed to their 
extreme conclusions. There has been little hesitancy or 
delay. A ruling temper has been even more manifest 
than in England, and has been held in check much less 
by social and religious influences. Philosophy has pursued 
its own path, less involved in the general current of na- 
tional life. That current is not so broad, unbroken, and 
controlling as in England. 

Vivacity, facile intellectual activity, are the leading 
characteristics of the French mind. In the logical develop- 
ment of premises, it is not brought to a pause either by 
the extreme nature of the propositions that follow from 
them, or by their conflict with other convictions and other 
interests. The imaginative and logical faculties, impelled 
by lively sensibilities, are dominant, and lead to sudden 
and brilliant creation, with the answering liability of un- 
substantial quality. This disposition is well illustrated 
in the story told in connection with Voltaire. A citizen 
wrote him asking definitely whether there was or was not 
a God, and desiring an answer by the next mail. The 
French are in marked contrast with the English in the 
ease with which they cast off constraints. The practical 



326 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

temper of the English means this very thing, that they 
are sensitive to a wide range of interests, and do not 
readily suffer their opinions or actions to come into col- 
lision with them. They check a movement of thought 
which threatens the overthrow of social and religious 
sentiments, and hold it within the limits of safety. This 
disposition may be regarded as unfaithfulness to intellec- 
tual incentives. It may, indeed, be this, but it is hardly 
this as a national trait. It is rather a just deference to 
the forces of truth as indicated in ruling convictions ; a 
sense of the ease with which a logical process, by the 
narrowness of its premises, slips the restraints of truth 
and becomes wholly erratic and misleading ; a feeling 
that the things which are hold in themselves the true 
logic of events, the conclusions of many minds, and are 
more to be trusted than any current fashion of thought. 
The English have been successful in physical inquiries by 
virtue of this disposition. They have held back from 
extreme statements and startling theories till sufficient 
data could be accumulated to warrant a doctrine. In 
social questions and civic growth, this habit of mind has 
been associated with a mastery over critical circumstances, 
and an escape from wasted effort, altogether unusual. 
They have understood better than most people the possi- 
bilities involved in existing conditions. A national life, 
a national sentimient, has been achieved, which, as the 
product oi existing forces, the outcome of a great variety 
of interests, has held firmly in hand the extravagance of 
individuals, and kept the sudden and the unexpected i 
within narrow limits. There is implied, if not consciously 
held, in this temper a profound respect for that coherence 
of truth which turns history into progress, and human 
life into social growth. The individual is overawed, as ; 



DE LA METTRIE. 327 

he well may be, by forces beyond the range of his vision. 
The organic life has its way with him and with society. 

In philosophy, this hesitancy to accept extreme conclu- 
sions involves a sense of the complexity of the data cov- 
ered by our reasoning, and the very different appearances 
which they offer from diverse positions. Experience is 
corrected by experience, powers are held in balance by 
powers, till we attain that equipoise of thought which is 
the fulness of truth. The French laid hold with avidity 
of the materialistic tendencies contained In the specula- 
tions of Locke, and pushed them at once Into pronounced 
materialism. No other nation has given the same full 
and systematic statement to this form of belief. The 
movement was doubtless accelerated by the deep division 
in the social and religious life of France, and the hostility 
to each other of Its two extremes. The theological influ- 
ence was present, not by way of restraint, but as a repul- 
sion impelling thought in the opposite direction. 

PART I. 

FRENCH MATERIALISM. 

§ 2. Materialism In France met with a very Instant and 
somewhat repellent birth In " L'Homme Machine." This 
treatise was the production of De la Mettrie (1709), a 
physician. It transferred the view of animal life offered 
by Descartes to human life. Man is a cunningly devised 
piece of mechanism, played on by the external world 
through the sensibilities and the nervous system. The 
work was called out by the experiences of a fever, and 
expressed, in the most direct and unqualified way, the 
dependencies of the mind on the body — always upper- 



328 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

most in disease. This subjection, the symptom and 
product of disease, properly puts great restraint on all 
reasoning from an abnormal to a normal condition. He 
affirmed the increase and decrease of the soul with the 
body, and the complete inclusion of the one in the other. 
He was a man of loose morals — which means the domi- 
nance of sensuous impulses — and found much in his own 
experience to confirm his theory. The theory is an ex- 
position of human life on the side of its weakness, and 
not of its strength ; in its failures and defeats, not in its 
successes. 

'* L'Homme Machine " has been said to be one of those 
books which all read, all condemn, and from which all 
borrow. It has the fascination of unhesitancy, and the 
support of some very palpable, if very gross, experiences, 
which gain a sudden power when boldly pushed to an 
extreme conclusion. Such assertions as these: ''No 
senses, no ideas. The fewer senses, the fewer ideas. 
The soul depends essentially upon the organs of the body 
with which it is found, grows and decreases with them," 
so true in themselves, may easily be made to cast a deep 
shadow on the correlative truths with which they are 
associated in life. The simplicity of the logic and its final 
character commend it to the hasty mind. La Mettrie 
gives another example of the inescapable pressure of mys- 
tery on the spirit of man, leading him, after all his bold 
denials, to admit it again in a magnified form in new ways. 
Having subjected the mind to the body, and united in it 
the constructive forces by which the purposes of life are 
fulfilled, he affirmed that each fibre is stirred by an 
indwelling principle. He found a million minute im- 
pulses, in no way supported by experience, mysteriously 
correlated with each other, more acceptable than one 



DE LA METTRIE. 329 

supreme impulse, which the facts before us seem to 
embody. This is explanationby infinitesimals, an evasion 
of the force of a conclusion by its indefinite subdivision, 
as a stone may be pulverized till its particles are impal- 
pable to the senses, and then be blown away by the 
breath. 

The philosophy of La Mettrie was an identification of 
animal and rational life. Sensationalism makes no dis- 
tinction between them but one of degrees. Organic 
action, instinctive action, associative action, belong to the 
brute. They also belong to man, but are greatly modified 
in him by an insight into relations, which carries every- 
where the light of reason. The experience of man is 
thus penetrated, more and more, by anew element. The 
light, at first hidden behind the mist and the clouds and 
obscurely percolating through them, at length disperses 
them, opens up new spaces, and gives a clearness to 
vision which transforms the intellectual world. La 
Mettrie thought it an experiment in order, to teach an 
ape to speak, and so to bring it within the range of 
human ideas. It certainly would be. No animal will 
speak, in the deeper sense of the word, till it has a 
rational idea to convey. Possessed of this, even in the 
most incipient form, expression will become inevitable. 
The ape works on the practical side under organic rela- 
tions, as the tree does ; but no intelligible construction of 
life, on the abstract side, is possible to it. There will often 
be a sharp and startling reflection of the higher in the 
lower, as of the heavens in the cup of water in one's hand. 
But the two will remain as far apart as ever. It is an ex- 
periment quite crucial to teach an ape to talk. Nor need 
we be unreasonable in our requisition. A single idea, 
intelligibly expressed, will suffice. The lack of power in 



330 PHILOSOPHY IX FRANCE. 

animals to express, not a concrete state, but the simplest 
abstract idea, defines the nature of the lower form of 
conscious life. Its experiences lie within the range of 
association, but forever below that of comprehension. 

Sensationalism is applicable, in a high degree, to animal 
life. The resources of association are sufficient to explain 
the intelligence of animals, but fail to expound the deeper 
movements of reason, which enclose human life in a pro- 
founder consciousness. 

§ 3. The philosopher who gave the empirical tendency 
most full, consistent, and yet restrained expression, in 
France, was Condillac (171 5). Condillac starts with the 
reference by Locke of all knowledge to sensation. Sen- 
sations are the first, terms in consciousness. Some of 
these are more pungent than others, and so give occasion 
to what we term attention. These sensations are pro- 
longed, and this prolongation is the basis of memory. 
Sensations, returning in memory, have the force of ideas. 
Attention to two or more sensations, or two or more 
ideas, is comparison. The order of the reproduction of 
ideas is determined by the order of their introduction as 
sensations. Will is desire when the object of desire is 
attainable. Thus the mechanism of mind is fully made 
out, as the result of the one primary fact, sensation. 
These processes are a parody of the powers of mind — a 
statement of that with which they are associated rather 
than the ver-y powers themselves. Yet Condillac meant 
these shadows of impressions, chasing each other across 
the field of consciousness, as a full and sufficient descrip- 
tion of a rational experience. This is seen in the image 
under which he enforced his conception. One sensation 
after another is imparted to a statue. Life is awakened 
in it and spreads, like a lichen, over all the field of knowl- 



BARON D'HOLBACH. 331 

edge. This system cannot be easily rivalled in simplicity 
and inadequacy. The shadows that pursue each other on 
the earth are not more unlike the clouds, saturated with 
light, that yield them, than are these sensational traces 
of mind unlike the mind itself in its full quota of powers. 
Poetry and philosophy are not altogether unlike. Each 
must turn, in excellence, on its adequate conception of 
that with which it has to deal ; and neither can receive 
this impression otherwise than by its own insight. 

Helvetius (171 5) presented the ethical theory which 
usually accompanies an empirical philosophy, in its ear- 
lier and cruder form, that of self-interest. He regarded 
self-love as the proper incentive of human action. He 
believed that if personal well-being is sought, in a large 
way, it will be found fully in harmony with the well-being 
of all. He did not, however, recognize the fact that this 
assertion implies impulses and affections of a disinter- 
ested character. The harmony of society is a thing quite 
indifferent to one predominantly selfish. When self-inter- 
est includes the general well-being, it involves feelings 
that belong to a wider relation. Helvetius strove to 
make the transition, but did not recognize its true 
grounds in the moral nature. 

§4. Baron d'Holbach (1723), in his " System of Nature," 
enforced a very pronounced form of materialism. It 
was too unqualified and gross to be persuasive. It did 
not lie in the line of English empiricism, but reverted to 
ideas accepted by Hobbes, and by the Greek philosopher, 
Empedocles. He regarded motion as the one universal, 
significant fact, that into which all changes may be re- 
solved. Motion in the brain is the ground of mental 
phenomena ; soul, spirit, is a personification due to ig- 
norance. Love and hate secure the order of the moral 



332 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

world, as attraction and repulsion that of the physical 
world. Self-love furnishes the cohesive force in social 
life. Durable enjoyment is the true motive of action. 
Holbach, giving such prominence to motion as involving 
the nature of all phenomena, was ready to restore fire to 
its place as a primitive element, and to make it the life- 
principle. His conclusions bore the same gross charac- 
ter, on the physical side, as those of La Mettrie on the 
physiological side. 

Baron d'Holbach came to Paris early in life, and estab- 
lished a hospitable centre of resort for men of thought 
and of letters. His views were tolerated and counte- 
nanced rather than entertained by such men as Diderot, 
La Grange, D'Alembert. It was the unbelief of the 
time which opened the way for these opinions, rather 
than any conviction which they themselves inspired. 
Views so barren as these could gain intellectual flavor 
only from a sense of opposition. Diderot and D'Alem- 
bert — Encyclopaedists — were only indirectly interested in 
philosophy, and were too idealistic, or too sceptical, in 
their tendencies to entertain or advocate a materialism 
of so pronounced an order. It was the social position of 
Baron d'Holbach, united with that unbelief which was 
rapidly gaining a revolutionary character, that gave, for 
the moment, currency to a philosophy of so extreme and 
uninspired a character. It can hardly be regarded, any 
more than the speculations of La Mettrie, as resting on a 
philosophical basis. The disbelief of an eminent special- 
ist, like D'Alembert, served to prepare the way for Posi- 
tivism, rather than for materialism. 

§ 5- The most recent expression in France of the ma- 
terialistic tendency, connected with the associative phi- 
losophy of Spencer, is that of H. A. Taine. Taine, in his 



TAINE. 333 

work entitled " On Intelligence," gives prominence to the 
physiological processes which accompany mental activity, 
and presents fully the knowledge which had been acquired 
concerning them. He affirms : '* We are entitled to admit 
that the cerebral event and mental event are, at foun- 
dation, but one and the same event under two aspects, 
one moral, the other physical, one accessible to conscious- 
ness, the other accessible to the senses. What we term 
life is a more delicate chemical action of more complex 
chemical elements. Phrase for phrase, word for word, 
the physical event, as we represent it to ourselves, trans- 
lates the mental event." 

The ground on which Talne affirms the identity of the 
mental state with the cerebral action which accompanies 
it Is that this is the most simple theory ; that if we admit 
their Intrinsic diversity, we must then Invoke some super- 
natural agency, some preestablished harmony, to reunite 
them. The two are one In spite of the most radical dif- 
ference which lies in the compass of our experience, for If 
they are not one, they are so diverse that we know of no 
way by which to bring 'them together. This is heroic 
reasoning; It makes nothing of the difficulty of the ex- 
planation. It obliterates the problem, the diversity of 
physical and mental phenomena, as the easiest method 
of its solution. This Is accomplished under a vague use 
of the words within and without, an approach to facts 
through consciousness and an approach to the same facts 
through the senses. Within and without, to be used In- 
telligibly, must be confined to physical facts, or both be 
transferred figuratively to mental facts. We lose at once 
all comprehension, when we mean by knowledge from 
without a sensuous observation of cerebral states, and 
by knowledge from within the mind's apprehension of Its 



334 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

own activity. Consciousness, Instead of being a form-ele- 
ment, Inseparable from facts of a certain order, becomes 
an unintelligible interior sight, directed to cerebral states ; 
an observation of them no one knows how or to what 
purpose. Incongruity of imagery can go no farther. All 
conditions of apprehension disappear. Nor ought M. 
Taine to have the least difficulty In recognizing the de- 
pendence of mental facts and physical facts, no matter 
how diverse, on each other. All causation Is resolved by 
him into succession, and succession may as readily hold 
between dissimilar as similar events. 

While the empiricist pushes aside the notion of causa- 
tion In Its true constructive office, he retains the objec- 
tions which arise from it. If his own rendering of cau- 
sation Is correct, then there can be no chasm between any 
two things or events, for there is no energy of any sort to 
pass between them. Explanation should be perfectly 
facile, for It Involves no coherence of one thing with 
another. 

Philosophy, If it is to maintain its own dignity, if it is 
to make its voluminous presentations worth the consid- 
eration they challenge, must assert a force and veracity 
in its connections far greater than those provided for In the 
associative processes of Taine. The mind passes every 
moment " through the confusion of monstrous deliria and 
yelling madness," and takes Its risks of settling into safe 
knowledge. - And this settling into safe knowledge means 
nothing more than slipping Into a habitual state, the 
product of a fortunate concurrence of physical circum- 
stances. Sound observation, to say nothing of searching 
criticism, becomes, under this doctrine of association, for- 
ever impossible by virtue of these tyrannical dependen- 
cies which render it so infinitely desirable. Madness, in 



COMTE. 335 

a milder or a more malignant form, is ready to anticipate 
the mind in every act of correction and instruction. If a 
man would fain think, he must still think only as the 
ruling frenzy permits him. We ought, ere long, to reach 
the point at which we shall be relieved from philosophy, 
when philosophy can provide for itself no suitable prem- 
ises. That philosophy, however, as a play of weird fan- 
cies, should remain optional with us, is, perhaps, too much 
to hope. Such a fact would imply one strain of sanity 
among insane things. If French thought can take to 
itself some merit on the ground of a fearless, logical co- 
herence in its processes, the praise is lost again in the 
irrational audacity with which it sets aside the mind's 
first hold on the facts themselves. There is not weight 
enough in the body of the gymnast to give importance to 
his somersets. 

§ 6. The affirmation of the unfitness of philosophy, 
under the existing conditions of thought, was reached in 
the Positivism of Comte (1798). The fundamental posi- 
tion of this system is, that we have, and can have, no 
knowledge of the question's ordinarily discussed in meta- 
physics ; that we should, therefore, confine our attention 
to the sensuous data of experience. Positive knowledge 
is a knowledge of the relation of phenomena to each 
other. This should satisfy the mind, as all the knowing 
that lies within its reach. Positivism is the natural fruit 
of empiricism. Empiricism magnifies phenomena, and 
signally fails in all explanations which transcend them. 
Positivism recognizes this failure, proclaims it as inevi- 
table, and builds itself upon it. The positivist brings the 
most cogent refutation to the empiricist by accepting at 
their full value his negations and failures, and turning 
wearily from his reduplicated processes. Positivism ac- 



336 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

cepts the inevitable which empiricism announces, and 
then has no farther use for empiricism itself. Its most 
instant and important assertion is the rejection of a 
branch of inquiry for which we have, in our own powers, 
no sufficient means. It reserves all its efforts for investi- 
gations that can be fruitful. Positivism is the most tell- 
ing commentary on the empirical philosophy that gave 
rise to it. 

Not only has Positivism a right to attention as taking 
a position which best sums up a vast amount of futile 
speculation ; it also has a claim upon us, by virtue of lay- 
ing aside a negative and critical attitude in faith and social 
construction, and entering on a stage of positive, produc- 
tive belief and effort. Its method has been defined as 
positive, scientific, human, sociologic, historical — that is, 
evolutionary. It accepts the fundamental principle. He 
only destroys who can replace. " It struggles to explain 
the history of humanity as a whole, and points out the 
future of humanity as the inevitable sequel of its history." 
Recovering itself at once from the disappointment of 
futile speculation, reasserting knowledge in its more im- 
mediate and palpable forms, enlarging this knowledge 
and devoting it to its highest ministration in social con- 
struction. Positivism stands for a truly vital force, and 
demands our respectful attention. It has been produc- 
tive of noble character. The profound belief that is in it 
overcomes "its unbelief, and goes far to set it aside in its 
results. Positivism is a faith, and there are few forms of 
faith that struggle harder to call out belief in the ultimate 
success of humanity, or preach it more unreservedly. 
Having turned despairingly away from the ordinary 
sources of uplifting, spiritual impulses, as illusory, it 
enters only the more determinedly on the effort to renew 



POSITIVISM. 337 

these better tendencies by the motives that still remain. 
This it seems to itself to have accomplished, and therein 
renews and glorifies the power of faith ; faith that lays 
hold of the future as gathering up all the light and reve- 
lation of history. 

Positivism is a philosophy, though it excludes the 
higher problems of philosophy, and thinks to work out 
human life exclusively under its sensuous terms. Posi- 
tivism takes offence at any inquiry into ultimate, cosmic 
terms, their dependence on each other, or the nature of 
the order under which they move forward. It regards 
the facts themselves, in their immediate form, as the only 
fitting subject of investigation, and rules out the ques- 
tions of cosmology and theology as beyond the scope of 
knowledge. Despair on that side is replaced by renewed 
confidence on this side, and having sufficiently limited 
the field, the mind addresses itself boldly to its cultiva- 
tion. The human mind has always found itself on the 
verge of wider questions than those of sense, has always 
put them, and will forever put them, waiting on more 
and more sufficient answers. As long as there are facts 
of some order, something to be known, and clews to these 
facts, the indefatigable, unwearying human mind, recover- 
ing its energies with every generation, will open up afresh 
on these trails of thought. It will believe what it evi- 
dently must believe, that in the widest, profoundest sur- 
vey of the present, in its complex physical and spiritual 
factors, it holds the true key of all time. In the measure 
in which it masters the present, it masters all events 
which flow into it or flow from it. All knowledge con- 
firms this hope of the mind, all knowledge implies its 
correctness. A belief akin to this in the physical world 
is the basis of Positivism. This belief, extended to the 

22 



338 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

intellectual and spiritual world, is the foundation of the- 
ology. The weariness of Positivism puts no rational re- 
straint on the fresh activity of theism. 

The fundamental affirmation of Positivism on the side 
of limitation — which is its most distinctive side — is that 
we can know neither the beginning nor the end of things, 
but only their progress. This assertion is enforced by 
the law of the three stages through which, it is said, all 
investigation passes: the theological, the metaphysical, 
and the positive. These stages are not historically con- 
secutive, but consecutive in the process of individual de- 
velopment. They are not stages distinctly made in the 
progress of the race collectively, but in the growth of 
thought, when thought is pushing. There is a certain 
color of truth in these three stages of Positivism, but 
there is no law, no underlying force of reason, which ne- 
cessitates this movement, and justifies it. To affirmi such 
a tendency, and to repose Positivism as a philosophy 
upon it, is a pure metaphysic, as obscure and difficult as 
any doctrine displaced by it. The way out of philosophy 
is thus as blind a one as the way through it. True Posi- 
tivism must rest on sheer weariness, on an admitted fact 
of failure, on an overwhelming feeling that philosophy, in 
its highest range, has expended strength for no sufficient 
purpose. The moment Positivism, denying the province 
of philosophy — or metaphysics, as it prefers to term it, 
having attached to the word, by dint of much use, a 
disparaging meaning — undertakes to give a reason for 
its aversion, beyond that of simple discouragement, it is 
thrust at once back into philosophy in search of the 
grounds of action. The logic of Positivism is the logic 
of a man who sits down because he is weary, a logic 
addressed to those as weary as himself, and that will dis- 



POSITIVISM. 339 

appear of its own accord, when men are refreshed. It 
has hardly happened but this once in the history of the 
world that enough have been tired at the same time to 
make the event notable. 

The law of the three stages is a wild assumption as a 
proof of Positivism. Undoubtedly a few have accepted 
Positivism on the ground of its relation to the other two 
forms of thought. To infer from this fact that Positiv- 
ism is a correct system, is to imply that there is, in 
the law itself, some correct and unmistakable movement 
toward truth. Positivists are a small number in the class 
of thoughtful men, and can claim nothing for the con- 
clusion on the ground that it is theirs. The law is not 
established as a universal sequence ; far from it. Only 
rarely has thought, in its development, reached this re- 
sult. It more frequently has reached some other result. 
It has stopped short of Positivism, and satisfied itself 
with a correction of the methods which Positivism pro- 
nounces absolutely faulty. There is here no necessary 
and universal sequence of intellectual phenomena, suffi- 
cient to indicate of itself the forces which control them. 

Positivists, in common with all phenomenalists, need 
a better definition of law. Mere sequence, in the phys- 
ical world, does not constitute a law. It is not a law 
that night shall follow day. There must be a determin- 
ing power in the sequence before the sequence has the 
significancy of a law. Law implies a definite and fixed 
form of connection, resting on its own grounds. It marks 
lines of constructive energy. In the moral world, if we 
are to plead a law, we must do it on the basis of a suffi- 
cient reason. Men universally fall into error. Does it 
thereby become a law that men should fall into error? 
Are any of the steps of error made legitimate by the cer- 



340 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

tainty with which men take them ? Error is a universal 
liability ; its causes are innumerable, and act, each and 
all, in suspension of the laws of thought. If it were true, 
as it is not, that men's thoughts tend universally to issue 
in Positivism, it would be necessary to render some sound 
and sufficient reason for this result, if we would accept it 
as having the force of a constructive principle. The 
wide prevalence of superstition is not a defence of it. 

The tendency, in the theological phase of development, 
to refer events universally and directly to a spiritual 
agent of some sort, is not absolute error, but partial error. 
It has its basis in our own intellectual constitution. It 
is waiting the correction of a larger experience. The 
tendency later to admit metaphysical entities, and to 
refer physical facts to them, marks another valid move- 
ment of mind in correction of the previous one. The 
two act and react on each other, and bring to each other 
increasing clearness of definition. Law, for example, is 
often a metaphysical abstraction with us, but it does not, 
therefore, fail to subserve the purposes of growing knowl- 
edge. Definiteness of idea becomes more and more the 
very force of our convictions. This changeableness of 
impressions arises from the fact that our powers are not 
absolute, do not assign themselves at once their own 
spheres, but find their way tentatively, under the correc- 
tion of experience, into the fine harmony of real knowl- 
edge. Personal and physical agencies are slowly distin- 
guished from each other, are reconciled with each other, 
and so we grow in the comprehension of the world, never 
altogether correct, never wholly wrong, in our convictions. 
If a few, or many, minds, impatient of this reconciliation, 
deny the validity of the processes, and hasten on to Pos- 
itivism ; if, adding mistake to mistake, they turn their 



POSITIVISM. 341 

backs on the past as a product of hopeless error, cer- 
tainly there is in this fact no proof of Positivism. The 
probability is rather that they are only displacing one 
delusion by another. Having broken with the past, they 
have less reasonable hope than ever, in the newness of 
their start, of achieving success in the present. The 
sweeping denials with which Positivism starts on its way 
are already painful predictions of its failure. 

As the explanation of the world shall advance under 
personal and physical agents, there will be a growing 
simplicity of causes, which will have something the same 
effect as Positivism in making our knowledge definitely 
phenomenal, and in ridding it of superfluous terms. In 
the rhythmical growth of knowledge, under powers that 
push alternately in opposite directions and correct the 
errors of to-day by the errors of to-morrow, Positivism 
was sure to rise, and is sure also of speedy repressment. 
Positivism, impatient of the slow and inadequate elimina- 
tion of error, broke away from a movement which has 
characterized the development of thought from its ear- 
liest stages, with a bold denial of the validity of its first 
steps. Summing up in itself the entire significancy of 
inquiry, neglecting the fundamental ideas under which it 
has so far progressed, Positivism asserts for itself a posi- 
tion which cannot fall to any doctrine or method what- 
ever. Its spirit is dogmatic, unhistorical, and opposed to 
every conception of development. Evolution progresses 
by successive steps of inclusion. Positivism establishes 
itself by the most violent exclusion. It sweeps the 
ground from under all previous thought as a preparation 
for the reception of its own thought. 

This error tends, however, rapidly to correct itself by 
virtue of its more constructive affirmations. Positivism 



342 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

preeminently insists on being scientific, and science is 
full of metaphysical entities, which it finds occasion to 
shift and correct with enlarging knowledge. What is 
force under its various forms, what is causation, or law, 
or the elements, which, as distinct groups of properties, 
make up the first terms of thought, but metaphysical en- 
tities, conceptions which combine for us the phenomenal 
terms of truth ? The relating process cannot go forward 
without these centres of construction. Science has no 
objection to these and like entities so long as they fulfil 
its purposes. It assumes them provisionally, ever giving 
them more simple and determinate expression. Its cau- 
tion in their use arises not from any reluctance to accept 
them, but from the fear that a too ready admission in 
one form should prevent their growth into more perfect 
forms. An entity, a metaphysical entity, of some sort, 
is the nucleus of thought in every form of inquiry. If 
science rejects levity as a principle in physics, it is not 
because of any metaphysical quality in it, but because 
the conception of gravity performs the same office in a 
more simple form. The one disappears by an enlarge- 
ment of the other. The scientist in electricity is willing 
to accept one or two entities, under one or another con- 
ception of their nature, according as the facts are best 
marshalled by the explanatory ideas which are thus 
brought to them. The doctrine of the equivalence of 
forces, whose applications have been so fruitful in phys- 
ics, not only assumes unphenomenal being, but assigns it 
definite, quantitative relations. The phenomena which 
accompany a transfer of force from one form of expres- 
sion to another, from chemical affinities to heat and me- 
chanical action, have no equality in reference to each 
other save through the force assumed to be present in 



POSITIVISM. 343 

each manifestation. The phenomena which attend on 
the consumption of one hundred pounds of coal in differ- 
ent engines, or in the same engine at different times, are 
not identical. The equivalence asserted in connection 
with them is not one of appearances, but of the forces 
involved. Science does not hesitate a moment in accept- 
ing the reality of force, and in tracing it through its plain 
and obscure forms of presentation. Yet spirit and Infi- 
nite Spirit are no more matters of inference and intel- 
lectual construction than is force. 

Science is full of faith. Its inductions, its empirical 
inquiries, are exceedingly narrow, when contrasted either 
with the multiplicity of facts or the breadth of its own 
conclusions from them. Having grounded a law in ob- 
servation, it instantly gives it the range of the universe. 
Science reposes everywhere on the doctrine of universal- 
ity and identity of methods, and has the most absolute 
belief in the coherence of the world with itself — its intel- 
lectual integrity. The fundamental dogma of science is 
the universality of law, an.d this dogma is nothing more 
than a metaphysical doctrine, nothing more than the 
extension by the mind of its terms of thought indefi- 
nitely beyond all observation. If positive knowledge 
means phenomenal knowledge, and does not include the 
inferences derived from such knowledge, does not pro- 
vide for its enlargement under ideas purely mental, then 
but a very small part of science is positive ; nay, we can 
hardly say that any portion of it is positive, for it is not 
phenomena phenomenally apprehended which constitute 
science, but phenomena interpreted, made to stand to- 
gether under forces and laws, metaphysical entities, to 
which the mind has assigned universal relations. Phe- 
nomena are particular, variable, vanishing, no matter how 



344 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

complete our perception of them. Whatever breadth 
they get is given them by means of some universal no- 
tion that is put back of them, some universal force, some 
eternal law. 

Science assumes without doubt and without discus- 
sion — it becomes philosophy the moment it enters on the 
discussion — all the connections of thought, and laps 
unhesitatingly its spoils of knowledge in this network of 
connections. The ideas that run through the facts dis- 
cussed by it run far beyond them, and by virtue of their 
manifold force hold the universe together as one coherent, 
rational whole. The mind's grasp of relations is just as 
quietly accepted by science as the perception of the 
senses, and it is no more suspicious of a metaphysical 
entity in the one case than in the other. A psychology 
is involved in science as much as a scheme of physics, 
only the one is at once assumed and the other sought out. 

Positivism, in undertaking to confine knowledge to 
phenomena, differs totally from science. Science is 
wholly indifferent to any such distinction. She assumes 
a sound philosophy, a sound mental movement, and pro- 
ceeds at once to define all truth under it, allowing it to 
extend inward and outward as far as it may. Positivism 
takes the last result of a suicidal process, and then pro- 
ceeds, by means of it, to establish a philosophy of nega- 
tion, and that with a dogmatic force which few systems 
can rival. The conviction which has attended on a hun- 
dred failures is not lost, but gathered up in full force in 
the final effort with which they are all thrust back into 
limbo. Magnificent philosophy, that ever saves herself, 
no matter what wreck of goods and waste of wares she 
may suffer! 

The affirmation with which science for the moment 



POSITIVISM. 345 

suspends all philosophy is, that the conceptions and proc- 
esses of mind are all normal, its insights are real, its ref- 
erences sound, its extension of data correct. The funda- 
mental assertion of Positivism is, only a fraction of the 
things pursued by the mind are within its reach. In refer- 
ence to the remainder, it is a child crying for the moon. 
The speculations it has most pertinaciously pursued with 
its best adult powers are illusions. It escapes this decep- 
tion of method, this force of its own ideas over it, only 
with the utmost difificulty. The inquiries of theology 
and of philosophy are of this character. The theory of 
the inadequacy of speculative inquiry is not a return to 
science, it is an extreme assertion of philosophy, and yet 
one that wins for itself no footing within philosophy. 
Positivism cannot be built up on any such inadequate 
basis as this. It can only occupy itself with assertions 
which lack the underlying force of all real knowledge, 
faith in the vigor of mind and the vital coherence of 
things. Phenomena alone are the mere phantoms of 
truth, its disembodied symbols. We might as well study 
vegetable physiology in the skeleton leaf whose fluids, 
grains of color, vital tissue, we had dissolved away, as to 
study the world in its phenomenal aspects, forgetful of 
the intellectual relations and life that knit them together. 
All that science quietly and thus most completely as- 
sumes. Positivism is ready distinctly and dogmatically 
to deny, and then to proceed as if the acceptance and 
the rejection left the two in the same position. Forget- 
ful of its own theoretical attitude, it takes to itself all the 
familiar methods and guiding ideas of mind, runs freely 
along the tenuous webs of thought, fastens its lines in the 
old ways, and spins them to suit its existing wants. Only 
thus can it keep the threads of speculation from tangling 



346 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

hopelessly, or floating idly on the air, and make them 
visible under its own fitful flashes of light. 

Science proceeds on the assured coherence of the uni- 
verse both on its physical and its intellectual side. Posi- 
tivism proceeds on its fundamental incoherence. The one 
knows no limits to investigation ; the other maps out in 
advance the territory of truth, and, as the most instant 
duty, sets up its landmarks, fearful of being swept out 
among the ghostly, overmastering entities that lie beyond. 
The two conceptions are totally distinct. We cannot 
safely hold the least shreds of science by such a tenure. 

§ 7. Positivism especially addresses itself to Sociology. I 
It puts Sociology at the head of the sciences. Comte 
was peculiarly voluminous and successful in his social 
discussions. Inspired by a real humanity, he was able to 
conform to his views and turn to his purposes many 
social phenomena. The disciples of Positivism seem to 
be made up of those wholly weary of the results of em- 
pirical speculation, and those unable to find any refresh- 
ment in the familiar dogmas of theism ; and hence, as men 
of a strong ethical temper, they are ready to accept with 
surprise and gratitude the harmony and growth of society, 
pointed out on its practical side. Certainly, this is the 
only stimulating view left them, when they lose hold of 
the coherence of speculative truth. Comte became to his 
disciples a great prophet by simply rendering the social 
world in te'rms of fellowship, instead of terms of theology. 
The '^ synthesis of humanity " becomes a dream and an in- 
spiration to them, as does the Kingdom of Heaven to the , 
devout follower of Christ. Yet how can the positivist, in 
pursuing his object, the most immediate and urgent of 
any that offer themselves to an ardent and humane mind, 
avoid the question that has hitherto beset the effort on 



POSITIVISM. 347 

its theological and philosophical side : Is this progress 
truly possible, provided for in the frame of the world, in 
the constitution of mind and the movement of events? 
This question is not extrinsic, but intrinsic ; is not laid 
upon moral unfolding as something foreign to it, but is a 
searching, guiding insight to which it leads us every mo- 
ment. The nature of the moral tie, the force of the moral 
duties which bind us to each other and to society, their 
interior energy of construction and productive power of 
good, are to be discussed and clearly felt in Sociology. 
If we assume these ties and duties, we must accept them 
at a certain and sufficient moral value, and be prepared 
to make our opinions current, creative. Science does 
what it can to expound the moral ideas which are to 
govern society, both as original gifts and acquired tenden- 
cies. Positivism, if it is to maintain for Sociology the 
position it has been so quick to assign it, must deal with 
unusual clearness with these same dominant ideas of in- 
dividual life and social duty, and in doing it can in no 
way escape the old embroilments, doubts, and difficulties. 
The fact that the notion of right has for so long played a 
conspicuous part among metaphysical entities must not 
deter the positivist in his search after suitable forces 
wherewith to bind men together in society, nor embarrass 
him in tracing their origin or estimating their cohesive 
value. The motives which have, and are to have, the 
range of the social world are ethical. They express the 
mind's hold on many invisible things, the impulses under 
which its hopes are called forth, by which it constructs 
ideals and strives patiently to realize them ; and no man 
can enter this moral realm without at once encountering 
all these spiritual powers which rule in it. They will 
neither step aside nor suffer an ungenerous estimate. 



348 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

There is no quiet suppression or hasty assumption pos- 
sible. The progress of events has long since anticipated 
such an effort, and plunged us into discussions from which 
the only escape is solution. Religious motives have been, 
and are, chief factors in social construction. Neither the 
weariness nor the unbelief of the positivist is shared by 
the mass of men, nor will they concede to him his refuge. 
If his refutation is to be the antidote of religious dogma, 
it must be patient, reiterated, diversified. Men can be 
helped out of a slough only by those who are willing to 
step into it. To push the whole history of the world 
backward, and to put it, as it were, by the intervention of 
long ages, behind us, by a simple assertion of three stages 
of development, is attaching a degree of significance to a 
doctrine which does not belong to doctrine, is a magnifi- 
cence of power that one would hardly expect to have 
arisen out of a sense of the futility of our speculative 
faculties. This is not pride issuing in humiliation, but 
humiliation issuing in pride. The peremptory wave of 
hand with which all outworn doctrine is put down is only 
a prelude to the confidence with which the new dogma is 
uplifted. 

It is strange that those who lay so much stress on evo- 
lution often attach so little importance to past methods 
and achievements, and are ready to displace them in so 
instant and absolute a way. This attitude should belong, 
if to either, to the intuitionalist rather than to the empiri- 
cist, to him who believes in deep insight rather than to 
him who sums up growth in infinitesimal increments. 
How is it possible that the theological stage and the 
metaphysical stage should have had universal sway, and 
yet each have stood for a profound error? How is it 
possible that, standing for error, they should lead to a dis- 



POSITIVISM. 349 

tinctly correct result ? Evolution implies the presence of 
forces that have in them an unerring instinct of growth. 
The movement, like the flow of a river, no matter how 
involved it may be, cannot take place in the wrong direc- 
tion. The prevailing impulse, in spite of bends and re- 
treats, is certain in its action. If theology is, and is with 
such energy and universality, it is because it expresses 
not a deceptive but a real, not an accidental but an 
essential, phase of progress. The impulses contained in 
it hold, for the time being, all the upward tending powers 
of mind. A Positivism that expounds the history of 
humanity as a whole, and looks to the future of humanity 
as the true sequel of its history, can hardly accept a series 
of steps which abolish each other. Steps must be stages 
of growth. As nothing is complete in development, so 
nothing is altogether defective. Sufficiency and insuffi- 
ciency are everywhere intermingled, and express, on the 
one hand, the direction of growth, and on the other, the 
unstable equilibrium which pushes it forward. Positiv- 
ism, by its too decisive rejection of previous stages, by 
the minuteness and finality of its own methods, is self- 
destructive under evolution. It is not truly historical. 
It is not in the line of development in that profound way 
which marks the steps of real progress. It is the mass of 
waters in ocean and in river that feels the cosmic forces ; 
it is the body of human thought that sways hither and 
thither under the energies of universal truth. The posi- 
tivist detaches himself by too sweeping negations from 
the restless play of mind under ideas general and forceful 
enough to keep in ferment all the generations of men, 
yet so subtile and profound as to gain adequate expression 
only under the slow growth of ages. The positivist has 
striven to simplify the problem to the point at which it 



350 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

ceases to be a problem ; to give to development a purely- 
phenomenal expression, which leaves out the energies it 
contains, the spiritual forces with which it is pregnant. 
Those who believe in evolution are bound above all to 
stand firm in the surging waters, knowing that it is by 
means of this very strife that the energies involved are 
passing to a higher adjustment. If we accept the first 
chance of escape, we shall replace the living stream with 
the dead lagoon. 

Suppose the ardent positivist successful, that men show 
a disposition to draw together in thought and to deepen 
the common currents of feeling, that great constructive 
forces begin to show themselves, and a synthesis of 
humanity seems ready to be realized, what wide, pro- 
found, cosmic forces would such a fact as this imply ! 
What physical conditions, intellectual insights, historical 
tendencies, moral sentiments, softening reactions, and 
fresh growths ! If the world is thus organic, constructive, 
at one with itself from centre to circumference, what 
better proof could be offered that it holds within itself 
a latent divine thought ? How can the positivist, by his 
own successes, fail to reach this conclusion ? How can 
he, prior to his successes, if he would sustain his labors 
by a rational hope, fail to put this very question, whether 
his aims are contained in the very framework of things ? 
If they are not, can he hope to prosper? If they are, 
then what a divine force is at work with him ! Surely 
it is not an ill-timed reverence that simply says : Except 
the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build 
it ; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh 
but in vain. The immediate, practical, and beneficent 
nature of the purpose of the positivist virtually compels 
him to raise, in advance, the question of the concurrence 



POSITIVISM. 351 

of cosmic forces in his plans ; and as this harmony of all 
with all is realized, should compel him reverently to admit 
that the promised results reach infinitely beyond his 
labors. It is impossible to institute and carry out so 
great an undertaking as the positivist assigns himself with 
so narrow a moral scale as he accepts. Sociology gathers 
in itself all knowledge, and so it must all resources and 
all inspirations. It must draw upon the universe to its 
utmost bound, or there is some irrelevancy, some inade- 
quacy, somewhere. Can the positivist sufificiently feed and 
fatten the thoughts of men, in the hush of sensuous life, 
on things sweet to the tongue and restful to the eye, and 
at the same time sternly rebuke their spiritual insights, 
and hold back the lambent flame of their fantasies, 
because the spiritual universe is widened by them be- 
yond all limits of exact statement ? Let him try. We 
are glad that he tries, for trial Is the shortest method of 
testing the value of what he accepts and what he rejects. 
The special concatenation of his thought will prove like 
the ring of vapor we so often see shot into the air from 
the funnel of an engine, which gyrates, expands, and 
quickly disappears in the wider currents that enclose it. 
One of the directions in which the positivist preemi- 
nently discloses his conviction — and it is this conviction 
which draws our attention and admiration — has been his 
effort to givQ faith for faith, religion for religion, and knit 
the human household together In worship. The object 
of worship is to be the human race, in Its most worthy 
member's. This Is good, better than the worship of the 
sun, and a less distant reversion. Hero worship has been 
one of the more constant among religious cults. This 
worship, of course, is not to proceed without idealization. 
A man, in this reverence of humanity, is not bowing down 



352 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

to his own image, or to any member of the human family, 
his faults and foibles all upon him. He is rather devoutly 
recognizing those rational powers, resting far back on 
the past, and pushing with inevitable, growing impulse 
toward a purer, brighter, holier future. Humanity is 
made to stand for the most spiritual, most potent, most 
divine thing in the world, and so worshipped. But the 
divinity which shapes our ends is not wholly within us. 
The not-ourselves also makes for righteousness. This 
must add itself, by virtue of this very concurrence, to our 
worship. The process of personification must go forward, 
not as one of fiction and fancy, but as one which recog- 
nizes the rational unity of all things, and strives to make 
the mind full partaker of the life that is in them. One 
of the most humane in sentiment and vigorous in thought 
of the positivists insists that '' the bare knowledge of the 
laws of nature, with no supreme conception of what 
nature means, such as can fill the imagination, with no 
dominant idea whereon the sympathy and reverence can 
expend themselves, is mere dust and ashes, wholly incom- 
petent to sustain conduct." One deeper, more universal 
touch of sympathy, one more throb of life, and we are 
back again, in spite of our earlier protest of unbelief, at 
the throne of God. Let reason be what it truly and for- 
ever is — Reason — and the work is done. And how pro- 
foundly is all altered by this last spiritual conversion ! 
Littleness and largeness, the human and the divine, abide 
together ; the flow outward, worship, the flow inward, life. 
The isolate affection, the drop of water with its minute 
image, into which we were just now so curiously prying, 
becomes, touched by heat, a spirit of air, ever coming 
and going between the visible and the invisible, potently 
present in each because present in both. 



POSITIVISM. 353 

The world thus ceases to be a symbol without signifi- 
cation, a musical instrument without wind. The vibration 
in the human soul awakens the vibrations without it, the 
vibrations without it deepen the vibrations in the soul, 
and both abide together in growing response, where alone 
there is response, in the spiritual world. The positivist, 
having as an inquirer lost all, begins to regain all in the 
ever-new, ever-old, way by which we carry faith and rever- 
ence outward, upward, till at length, with slow gains, they 
come back upon us from the verge of being as the voice 
of God. If the positivist cannot enter into this work as 
done by others, if he wishes to do it over again for him- 
self, we may regret the loss of time and strength, but ad- 
mire his good beginning, and the patience with which he 
pushes on his way. Wise and good men are finding their 
consolation in this solitary, but not hopeless, effort. It 
seems to us only a rehearsal, in a small way, of what the 
race has done once for all in a large way. A spiritual 
presence, an intellectual power, a constructive energy, 
throbbing centrewise through all things, is the goal which 
the human mind, in individuals and in masses, in the 
clearness of rational insight and in the obscurity of sym- 
pathetic feeling, from many points and on many sides, is 
approaching, as the product of a development painful, 
tortuous, and very human, but also truly divine. 

The positivist is as one who has suffered shipwreck on 
a remote shore. He gathers gratefully each new waif of 
the broken vessel, and seems to himself to have gotten 
great riches, because he has saved a small portion of a 
cargo on which he placed so light a value when it was all 
his own. Comte, gleaning the historic, social, and relig- 
ious world in which God has been building these centu- 
ries, getting together the material of the Kingdom of 
23 



354 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

Heaven, and finding every now and then, with much joy, 
stuff suitable for a synthesis of humanity, is a strange 
spectacle, comic and tragic alike, but one in which the 
deeper sentiments profoundly overshadow the lighter 
ones. The positivist has been too hasty to declare a 
wreck. Under the inadequate results of empirical philos- 
ophy, with the conviction that science is digging out the 
foundations of faith, — as if spiritual truth rested otherwise 
on physical facts than the heavens upon the earth — swept 
on by an evolution that is a precipitate rendering of the 
more mechanical facts of the world into its own crude 
speech, bewildered by the obscurity of religious beliefs 
that seem to him burning themselves out in the ashes of 
bitterness, the positivist has striven to close the volume 
of the past and open a new volume, as if mankind so 
far had lost time and thought and the painful teachings 
of history amid idle tales. The courage which enables 
him to begin again is born of that wider faith that we 
cherish in the wisdom of the way, the divine way, of the 
world. It is the putting forth of the same indomitable 
powers of life, that, like early buds, have so often pierced 
the half-frozen soil, and will till all break out in full 
flowering. 

Positivism is very interesting because of its genuine 
spiritual power, both as developed in France and in 
England. It accepts empirical philosophy in its intrinsic 
barrenness, but enters at once on the difficult task of 
rearing spiritual plants in this thin soil. Forthwith they 
spring up, because they have no deepness of earth, but 
when the sun is up they are scorched, and, because they 
have no root, wither away. 



INTUITIONALISM. 355 



PART II. 
INTUITIONAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

§ 8. Intuitionalism magnifies the powers of mind. The 
truth understood and tlie understanding which attains it 
are reciprocal and living terms. Neither has any force 
without the other. Intuitionalism supports realism, be- 
cause the reality of that with which it deals, that which 
it knows, is the spontaneous assertion of the mind. The 
vigor of thought asserts itself in the validity of that 
which it attains. The danger of intuitionalism is allied 
to its strength. Because there is mastery in mind, it may 
make that mastery more immediate and complete than it 
is. It may limit its strength in the use of the powers it 
has affirmed by falling at once into dogma. Intuitional- 
ism thus instantly loses its advantage. Empiricism opens 
a successful attack on its hasty assertions. These give 
way, and with them passes, as an empty pretence, the 
assertion of the power of insight. Intuitionalism is not 
to be so interpreted as in any way to preclude develop- 
ment. Development contains other terms of equal mo- 
ment, a perpetual renewal and transfer, both in them- 
selves and in the mind's relation to them, of the truths 
to be apprehended. There must be the apprehending 
power — knowing is the highest potency — and there must 
also be those shifting, expanding conditions which call 
out the power and maintain it at its best expression. 
The fundamental thought of Pascal is the fundamental 
fact of intellectual life. Mind has too much insight to 
admit of scepticism, too little insight to allow dogmatism. 
The poise and flight of thought must lie between precipi- 



356 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

tate belief and precipitate unbelief, between the affirma- 
tion and the negation which are set up on either hand 
in support and restraint of spiritual life. We may fail of 
achievement, either by thinking it too facile or too diffi- 
cult. We best understand the world, and have the most 
persuasive motives to understand it still better, when we 
regard it as made up of enlarging terms on the one side, 
and growing powers on the other. 

To enter into the beauty of the world we need an 
insight of its own order. All experience confirms this. 
But we need just as certainly that the complex and 
changeable facts with which this beauty, in its manifold 
forms, is associated, should be forever passing before 
us, expanding our sensuous impressions, correcting our 
thoughts, widening our knowledge, and calling out in 
new ways our emotional life. The constant mobility of 
the one mobile whole is as essential as is the power to be 
put in reciprocal activity with it. 

The economist, full of first principles, easily becomes a 
dogmatist. He has seen all. The inductions he has 
made are correct, therefore are they not final ? Is not 
nature true to herself? Most assuredly; yet as events 
are in full flow, this coherency does not prevent the 
introduction of new conditions, the modification of old 
ones, by the very expenditure they are undergoing. The 
inductions of the economist are not so much untrue as 
inadequate,'not so much weak within themselves as in 
partial response only to changeable circumstances above 
and beyond themselves. Competition may and does 
help to render intolerable, and at length nugatory, its 
own terms. Economic action, lying within the wider field 
of social action, must accept the modifying force of higher 
laws. The chemistry of the living body is by no means 



INTUITIONALISM. 357 

that of the dead body. The economist has no occasion 
to distrust his insight, but he has constant occasion to 
renew it at every stage of social growth ; for these stages 
are ascensions, not mere rotations. They arise, not in sus- 
pension of previous knowledge nor in bare prolongation of 
it, but in furtherance of it. The insights of the mind, ex- 
cept in connection with the most simple, abstract truths, 
need to be repeated as often as the seeing of the eye. 

The supreme direction in which insight is liable to fall 
at once and ruinously into dogma is theology. Because 
we can know, because there are adequate grounds of be- 
lief, it does not follow that any belief is adequate or final. 
A theology that settles precipitately into doctrine, sus- 
pends at once the insight it affirms. The powers of mind 
cannot again be made available, till the vigor of unbelief 
— usually in an empirical form, experience in its inevitable 
growth moving away from the current rendering of it — 
has broken the bonds of belief. The extreme prevalence 
of the empirical tendency in France was largely due to 
the vigorous religious dogma that the philosophy of faith 
was called on to defend. The French are a people of 
affairs. A social and religious regime, unbearable on its 
theoretical and practical side, was weighing them down. 
It became the first need of philosophy to break this bar- 
rier, and the most ready means of doing it seemed to be 
an attack on the grounds of belief on which it had been 
made to rest. No sooner, however, was greater liberty 
won, than counter motives came into action, and the 
powers of mind were ready to reclaim their own. As 
long as the primary movement was revolutionary, crit- 
ical and destructive influences prevailed ; but when the 
overthrow was complete, reconstruction became the great 
interest. The French are too instant and rapid in over- 



358 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

throw to have much constructive power. Those who 
really apprehend the difficulty of laying foundations are 
slow in subverting them. Bed-rock in the social and relig- 
ious world is a painful deposit of long stages of belief, 
corrected and recorrected within itself. The debris of 
revolution offers no secure resting-place for new struct- 
ures. The people of France, active as they are in change, 
lack this very thing, the power to unite themselves to the 
past, the power to lay foundations not altogether green 
and insecure. 

The method of insight, the method of power, but of 
power cautiously and conscientiously used on all the ma- 
terial open to it, has had few disciples in France. This 
method seems to be opposed to science, though in fact it 
is thoroughly in harmony with it. Science, first directing 
its attention to the relatively simple and mechanical 
problems of the world, reaches results more exact and 
final than those which can later be attained, and results 
thought to be more full and final than they really are. 
It belongs to science itself to correct this impression, to 
become more and more aware that the increasingly com- 
plex conditions under which higher powers are acting 
allow of no complete formulae, are always admitting ele- 
ments of a fugitive, supersensuous character, and must be 
returned to again and again for measurements that are, 
after all, only proximate. When science lays aside the 
sweeping assertions of a novice, when it sees that its own 
progress is achieved by insights and is never final, and 
that no two stages of the mobile materials of knowledge 
offer the same phases of truth, it unites itself at once 
with that philosophy which turns on the penetrative 
power of mind exercised on the multitudinous, shifting 
facts of two worlds blended in one. 



INTUITIONALISM. 359 

The true equilibrium of mind is one of motion, and not 
one of rest ; the equiHbrium of the skater, who by his 
rapid, deft movement ghdes between accidents, and leaves 
on either hand the falls that seem ready to overtake him. 
In all profound questions, whether of physics or philoso- 
phy, it is by a steady advance from conception to concep- 
tion that truth is approached. Provisional statements 
become bright points in a line of light ; final ones are 
liable, by increasing distance, to darken down into ob- 
scurity. Whether we are seeking into the being of God, 
the powers of mind, the nature of molecules, the condi- 
tion of success is the same, an easy gliding forward under 
the changing circumstances which attend on insight. 
This is illustrated in the notion of ether as a medium of 
light. First, it was the most fluent and evenly diffused of 
all substances. It was found necessary, in the progress 
of knowledge, to shift this conception, to add one and 
another quality in behalf of its explanatory power. 
Ether has thus assumed characteristics that seem very 
extravagant, or even contradictory, It has become more 
just to think of it as an '' adamantine solid " than to re- 
gard it as a perfect fluid. This changeableness of inter- 
preting conceptions, themselves moving forward with the 
facts which they are gathering in for intellectual ends, is 
a first condition of correct thought. If the truths of 
science were as final as they are often conceived to be, 
the movement of thought would be much more mechani- 
cal and narrow than it really is. The universe, as a 
whole, is a moving equilibrium, whose disturbing forces 
are always beyond our estimates, yet whose great bodies 
are always sweeping into the free curves we assign them. 

§ 9. The French philosophy, which rested upon mind 
as a luminous centre, imparting and receiving light as 



360 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

much from Its own nature as from the nature of things, 
finds its earliest representative in Royer-Collard (1763). 
He was interested in Scotch philosophy, and united his 
discussions closely to it. 

Maine de Biran (1766) was a more extended and influ- 
ential writer. He seems in his life to have passed through 
quite an orbit of thought, the personal element steadily 
growing in force in his philosophy, till all was absorbed 
in the personality of God. He opened his discussion by 
distinguishing sensation and perception as relatively pas- 
sive and active states, and making the latter the product 
of our voluntary activity. He thus at once lifts the 
mind from a simply receptive attitude, and makes the 
larger share of its knowledge the fruit of its own well- 
directed inquiry. Sensations do not glide into percep- 
tions by simple multiplication under association. Once 
started in this line of thought, he made it the basis of 
his psychology. The knowledge which the mind has of 
itself is much deeper than that which it has of external 
things, and so becomes to it the interpreting light of all 
other relations. The sense of its own voluntary power 
and of the limitations to which that power is constantly 
subjected is fundamental with the mind. Here Biran 
approached closely the Scottish philosophy. The mind 
awakens at once, in putting forth its power under re- 
strictions, to the me and the not-me, and this fact domi- 
nates all its later experience. Out of this consciousness 
arises the notion of causation, which is not an a priori 
form. The categories of thought arise from our rational 
experience, penetrated more deeply in thought than ex- 
ternal things and relations can be. Pie carries this view 
so far as to affirm an internal space, giving the me, in its 
resistance to the limitations of physical powers, an imme^ 



COUSIN. 361 

diate place. The philosophy of Biran marks the reasser- 
tion in France of personal power, and was attended with 
much the same obscurity of ideas which accompanied the 
like revolt in Scotland. 

§ 10. By far the most brilliant and distinguished phi- 
losopher in this line of psychology in France was Victor 
Cousin (1792). He had all the facile and rapid move- 
ment of the French mind. The school which he founded, 
departing so widely from previous beliefs, yet receiving 
so much from them, has been termed eclectic. The opin- 
ions of Cousin contain too independent and ruling an 
idea to make this description quite applicable. He made 
much, as every wise man must, of previous results, and 
regarded them as embracing the germs of truth. The 
maxim of Leibnitz was accepted by him, that schools of 
philosophy are right in what they af^rm and wrong in 
what they deny. This maxim implies at once the powers 
and the limitations of the human mind. It has too much 
insight to pursue protractedly a vagary ; it has too little 
insight to see all the bearings of the truths disclosed to 
it. The cardinal doctrine of Cousin, which carried him 
beyond eclecticism, was his assertion of the insight of the 
reason in its higher, its impersonal and absolute activity. 
He thus found in ideas and in the mind's mastery of them 
— in their a priori force — the solution of all philosophy. 
This insight of the mind is the psychological basis of all 
truth. These ideas are not forms of apprehension arising 
from the mind's limitations in knowledge ; they are the 
products of the mind's power, its culminating activity. 
They involve a knowing of the most absolute order. 

This doctrine is especially developed in his lectures on 
" The True, the Beautiful, and the Good." These three 
conceptions express the triple insight of mind in the high- 



362 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

est field of experience — an experience which cannot be at- 
tained save by powers which are native to it. The man- 
ner in which these three highest forms of relation are 
regarded goes far to settle one's estimate of mind and 
matter respectively. These conceptions are addressed 
preeminently to the mind, and if they can have their origin 
in simply physical facts, then the highest intellectual ex- 
periences are capable of direct transfer, from below up- 
ward, in the progress of events. Mind is merely receptive 
of whatever matter impresses upon it. Cousin believed 
that these relations hold exclusively between thought and 
thought, man and God. Physical things are only media 
in imparting them, the language which for the moment 
holds them. Truth is the recognition by the mind of the 
coherent processes of mind, declared in the world about 
us. The perceptive power of truth lies in the mind 
that receives it, and in the mind that imparts it, not in 
the words or the things which transfer it. 

Cousin was not an eclectic as gathering here and there, 
at random, the truths which pleased him. He had a 
distinct method, and he strove by means of it to guide 
his way safely between the dogmatic assertions of Scotch 
philosophy and the free-moving idealism of Germany. 
He came under the Influence of Royer-Collard, and still 
more under that of BIran, but his own philosophy in- 
volved a more vigorous intuitionalism in a realistic form 
than had yet been offered. Some have spoken contempt- 
uously of Cousin. The feeling has had two occasions. 
Those who identify, under a narrow scientific temper, all 
knowledge with observation, have hardly the patience to 
consider, or the wisdom to understand, any bold assertion 
of mental powers. They have more consideration even 
for pure idealism, the tracing simply of mental connec- 



COUSIN. 363 

tlons, than for intuitionalism, which seems to them the 
entire obHteration of sound method by facile affirmation. 
The rhetorical style which belonged to Cousin, and which 
gave him great influence as a lecturer, also enhanced the 
liq:ht esteem in which he was held bv a few. His asser- 
tions were less guarded, less supported, less completely 
reconciled with each other, than they otherwise might 
have been, and they lacked that technical character, that 
musty aroma, which are associated with sound philosophy. 
The words of Sir William Hamilton indicate sufficiently 
that this unfavorable estimate of Cousin was hasty and 
superficial : '' A profound and original thinker, a lucid 
and eloquent writer, a scholar equally at home in ancient 
and modern learning, a philosopher superior to all preju- 
dice of age or countr}-, party or profession, and Avhose 
lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under every form of opin- 
ion, traces its unity ever through the most hostile sys- 
tems." He won a strong hold on France, and evinced 
the safe, practical force of his philosophy by affecting 
powerfully popular instruction. 

The method of Cousin was eminently sound. It was 
that of placing psycholog}' at the foundation of phi- 
losophy. A thorough inquir}^ into the powers of mind, 
sustained by careful analysis and wide observation, must 
define the limits of truth, and determine the means we 
possess of working within them. It is an estimate, broad, 
penetrative, and corrected by the facts of knowledge, of 
the scope of our mental faculties that must settle for us 
the lines and methods of inquir}\ There is here no room 
for the dogmatism of common sense, for each power must 
be defined and empirically verified through the entire 
range of its activity; nor for the sweeping conclusions of 
idealism, for the full variety of facts embraced in human 



364 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

experience, the bounds they assign each other, and the 
authority of each within its own bounds, are to be recog- 
nized. 

The psychology of Cousin, which he put at the entrance 
of philosophy, had some remarkable features. Reason, 
the power to apprehend the regulative relations involved 
in all thought, was with him the crowning faculty of mind. 
This insight, which yields the rational light under which 
all intelligible phenomena occur, he termed impersonal ; 
not so much for the purpose of defining its relation to the 
mind possessing it, as for indicating the relatively abso- 
lute and perfect forms of truth which it bestows. Knowl- 
edge, in its scope, ceases to be relative and personal by 
virtue of the identical, constructive terms seen in it by 
the reason. Higher truth is as impersonal and universal 
as the axioms of mathematics. This assertion does not 
carry over absoluteness to each included proposition, but 
only, in accordance with all human conviction, affirms 
light to be light, reason to be reason, quite beyond any 
local and personal rendering of them. 

Cousin failed to completely work out these impersonal 
ideas, but in their assertion we regard him as fully and 
nobly right. The presence of this power of reason, giving 
universal forms, or, better, discerning universal forms, 
must be recognized as the basis of all knowledge, and has 
been tacitly accepted by men as the immediate ground of 
those convictions which they hold in common. This 
power rests on the necessity of the case, and is involved 
in all human experience. Without it, knowledge sinks at 
once into relativity, suffers the taint of personal quality 
like an appetite, falls immeasurably below philosophy, 
and marks our schemes and visions as private experiences, 
futile, for all ends of wisdom, fit only to perish within 



COUSIN. 365 

themselves under the narrow conditions which begot 
them. In my own experience, the psychology of Cousin 
was the first book that lifted the mind fairly above the 
enveloping mist of empiricism, and planted it on a high 
place, with a wide world under it and before it. The kin- 
ship of philosophy and poetry is nowhere better seen than 
in this flash of divination, this stroke of absoluteness, in 
human thought, by which, in the midst of the infinitely 
changeable, it grasps at the unchangeable. The wonder 
is that men who deny it still weary themselves to find 
the doors of knowledge. This very perseverance of pur- 
suit by the mind, in spite of its own theories, is its eternal 
testimony to itself that it can know. There are men of 
wide range of thought, like Matthew Arnold, who regard 
" poetry as the reality, and philosophy as the illusion." 
Such a distinction is impossible. One cannot rescue 
poetry without rescuing philosophy also. One cannot 
retain the -play of colors in the sky with no recognition 
of the light which occasions them. The difficulty lies in 
separating the two too positively. The force of poetry is 
philosophy, and the vitality of philosophy is poetry. The 
intellectual formulae of life may often shift their form, 
but in every form must be wide enough and strong 
enough to sustain its experience, as the tree must have 
vigor enough to bear up its own foliage. 

A second factor in the philosophy of Cousin was his 
assertion of the spontaneity of mind. This is the basis 
of liberty in volition. Volition is not a sudden break in 
fixed relations, it is a single expression of a spontaneity 
that always attends on reason. Reason is not impelled 
toward any result. Its own insight assigns its line of 
action, and it moves freely in its fulfilment. Reason 
must be spontaneous in the vision of the truth, and in 



366 PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE. 

the pursuit of it under its own methods. Cousin failed 
to give this doctrine, as he failed to give the previous one, 
its full expression. The two do not leave us, as Cousin 
seemed to think, with being and causation as the ultimate 
productive ideas. This conclusion would land us in ideal- 
ism, which at times drew strongly on the mind of Cousin. 
Spontaneity marks a form of being incommensurate with 
causation. The central idea of being dichotomizes at 
once, in expression, into the two forms, things and per- 
sons, spatial and causal relations, conscious and free ones. 
Cousin failed, while asserting spontaneity, to cut it deeply 
asunder from causation. We cannot define liberty as a 
cause endowed with self-activity. Self-activity is at the 
farthest remove from causation. Cousin would hardly 
have come under the charge of pantheism if he had made 
the causation of the world a secondary expression under 
spontaneous, absolute reason. 

§ II. A double reaction followed empiricism both in 
France and in England. As there had been less hesi- 
tancy and reserve in France in the advance, so was there 
corresponding decision in the retreat. Positivism was 
the reaction of weakness and discouragement. The philo- 
sophical process was pronounced futile within itself and 
laid aside. With Comte this was a fundamental convic- 
tion ; with John Stuart Mill, an incipient feeling. The 
more direct reaction was, in England, a reassertion of 
common sense, and, in France, of the powers of the mind 
by Cousin. The latter was by far the more complete 
and just position. The intuitionalism of Cousin was in 
completion of the fundamental truth of Scotch phi- 
losophy. 

§ 12. The greater clearness and decision of the move- 
ment in France were also manifest in ethics. Theodore 



JOUFFROY. 367 

Jouffroy (1796), a disciple of Cousin, wrote with much 
discrimination and depth of conviction a work on morals. 
He held that the law of duty arises under the insight of 
reason into the constitution of man and of society. It is 
the law which man assigns himself in fulfilling his own 
destiny, a destiny laid upon him by his powers. He also 
wrote a treatise on aesthetics. In both works he enforced 
the apprehending powers of mind. He was much inter- 
ested in the works of Reid and Stewart, and extended 
their influence in France. Resting his conclusions, as 
did Cousin, on psychology, he distinguished psychology 
sharply from physiology, confining the former to the 
facts given in consciousness. 

In our own time, Paul Janet has been a vigorous writer 
on morals. He accepts primitive mental powers, resting 
firmly on an intuitive basis. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY. 

§ I. Philosophy in Italy has held a somewhat detached 
and subordinate position, as compared with philosophy 
in the leading nations of Europe, whose reciprocal influ- 
ence on each other has been great and constant. Italy, 
as the seat of Catholicism, has suffered from an active 
and aggressive ecclesiasticism in philosophical discussion. 
This has intensified the critical, as well as the conserva- 
tive, temper. Conclusions have been less capable of rec- 
onciliation. Scholasticism early suffered an abatement 
of power from a more extended and independent interest 
in the works of Plato and Aristotle. The Averroists, fol- 
lowing the commentary of Averroes on the works of 
Aristotle, and composed largely of those interested in 
natural science, were especially inclined to unbelief, and 
hostile to theological influence. They endured much 
persecution. A long and bitter strife was waged during 
the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. 

In the seventeenth century, the very prominent posi- 
tion won by Italy in the physical sciences served to give 
a more firm and secure position for resistance to ecclesias- 
tical dogma. Galileo (1564) was a founder in Italy of the 
inductive method of inquiry. He did more effectively, 
on the practical side, what Bacon attempted in England 
on the theoretical side. Italy was thus able to hold, for 
a time, the first position in the progress of science. 



vico. 369 

Galileo was possessed of a spirit of reverence which re- 
moved all oppugnancy between science and theology as 
he conceived them, and left the way open for the recon- 
ciliation of truth in sound philosophy. 

Giovanni Battista Vico (Naples, 1668) broadened the 
method of philosophical investigation by adding history 
and philology to psychology as a means of reaching the 
order of the universe. The divine plan, the problem of 
philosophy, is to be studied as it is unfolded in history, 
language, religion, law. He thus drew attention to those 
facts in which the laws of psychology express themselves, 
by which they are to be corrected, defined, and extended. 

The influence of Descartes, of Locke, and of Condillac 
extended to Italy, and gave rise, as elsewhere, to conflict- 
ing tendencies, though in a less decisive way. Descartes, 
by his affirmation of innate ideas, stood for the power of 
the mind, which might be developed either into intuition- 
alism and realism, or into idealism. Locke, in referring 
all knowledge to experience, opened the way to one phase 
or another of materialism, ,the subordination of the mind 
to external conditions. Though neither pure idealism 
nor pure materialism may often be reached, it is not easy, 
nor is it at all necessary, to disassociate the words ideal- 
istic and materialistic from the forms of thought that em- 
phasize, respectively, the processes of mind and the con- 
structive force of physical conditions. The philosophy 
which most directly harmonizes the two is intuitionalism, 
constructive realism. The powers of mind are awakened 
by the properties of matter, and the two develop, in their 
Interaction, real knowledge ; real, because it is a knowl- 
edge of real things ; knowledge, because it is the valid 
product of knowing faculties. 

§ 2. In the present era the forms of philosophy preva- 
24 



370 PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY. 

lent elsewhere reappear in Italy. They have been pre- 
sented by Professor Vincenzo Botta as '' i. Empiricism ; 
2. Criticism; 3. Idealism; 4. Ontologism ; 5. Hegelian- 
ism (Absolute Idealism) ; 6. Scholasticism ; 7. Positiv- 
ism." * 

Altering the arrangement somewhat, we will indicate, 
under his guidance, the position of each. Scholasticism 
remains in Italy associated with the conservative religious 
spirit that strives to maintain the spiritual and temporal 
power of the pope, and, in consequence, has found itself 
at war with the progress of thought and the unity of 
Italy. This school has been fortunate in its principal 
champion, Giovachino Ventura (1792). He was a de- 
fender of popular rights and a supporter of ecclesiastical 
reforms. In philosophy, he held to the ascendency of 
Thomas Aquinas, and made philosophy dependent on 
Revelation. Thus the Church remains the supreme ad- 
ministrator of truth. This view has been supported by 
many others, bound to the past by all the interests of the 
present and the entire force of religious faith. 

The most direct opposition to this orthodox belief is 
found in empiricism. Empiricism never more fully dis- 
plays its divine mission in the world of sober thought and 
sound knowledge than when called on to undertake the 
conflict with authority and ecclesiasticism. It is furnished 
forth for this line of attack as is no other aggressive ten- 
dency. It is able — not, indeed, with entire correctness, 
but with a correctness sufUcient for its purposes — to sup- 
port its advance with all the momentum of science, and, 
by virtue of popular tendencies which cannot be easily 
resisted, to demand a parley, which itself means a return 
to reason. 

* " History of Philosophy," Ueberweg. 



ROSMIXI. 371 

Melchiorre Gioja (1767), a disciple of national liberty, 
derived his philosophy from Condillac and his ethics 
from Bentham. A sturdy, patriotic, and empirical tem- 
per will hardly find more direct inspiration anywhere 
than in Bentham. The point of attack which he espe- 
cially pushed was statistical investigation. The facts of 
the world, expressed in figures and leading up to politics 
and social construction, are the true revelation of life. 
The jurist, Gian Domenico Romagnosi (1761), whom Pro- 
fessor Botta places with the empiricists, departed widely 
from this school in the direction of intuitionalism. His 
most pregnant principles were the assertion of human 
rights as grounded in nature and reason, and social safety 
as the proper criterion of punishment. 

What Professor Botta terms the philosophy of criticism 
is closely allied with realism. Its chief representative 
was Pasquale Galuppi (1770^ Professor of Philosophy in 
the University of Naples. He accepted the distinction 
of Kant between the substance of knowledge and its 
formative elements, and escaped idealism by denying 
that these forms are purely subjective. They are all 
reached by the mind in connection with an objective ex- 
perience, and partake of its reality. He was allied to the 
Scotch school in a belief in a direct knowledge of the ego 
and non-ego. He asserted the absolute nature of the 
moral law. He thus represented, in Italy, with much 
vigor of thought, the intuitive, realistic tendency. 

§ 3. The philosophy of idealism and ontologism are 
closely allied. Antonio Rosmini (1797), a priest who 
favored the movement toward national unitv, was the 
representative thinker in idealism. He regarded philoso- 
phy as the science of ultimate reasons, giving us the 
grounds of belief in reality. There are three forms of 



1^2 PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY. 

science, the science of ideas, the science of perceptions, 
and the science of reasons. Examples of each are logic, 
psychology, ontology. The object of all knowledge is 
reality. This contains two elements, an a priori form, and 
substance given in sensation. The one universal, all-em- 
bracing idea is being. In thought this universal idea is 
united with the material of sensation, and, under the unity 
of the mind, given as a valid judgment of reality. All 
later judgments are specific determinations under this 
primary judgment. His philosophy was built up around 
the notion of being, accepted as primitive. The funda- 
mental principle of his ethics was, '' Recognize practically 
being as you know it. Adapt your reverence and love to 
the degree of the worth of the being, and act accordingly." 
In this philosophy the idea of being, instead of remaining 
the most abstract and barren of conceptions, is made to 
include all with which it is associated. It gains its uni- 
versality by virtue of the narrowness of its scope, the 
slightness of the addition which its assertion makes to 
our knowledge. But by means of this universality, pos- 
sible only because of the emptiness of the notion, being 
is made, in a system of idealism, to become the womb of 
all truth. Tracing connections under this attenuated 
idea, which has no control over them, takes the place of 
the knowledge of the various modes of being, learned only 
in experience, and which signify precisely what observa- 
tion defines them to be, and no more. Ringing changes 
on the empty notion of being, as if it in some way holds 
the universe in itself, is one of the unproductive methods 
of idealism. 

The ontologism of Vincenzo Gioberti (1801), also a 
priest and a liberal, was allied to the idealism of Rosmini. 
His working formula was, E71S creat existentias, Being 



POSITIVISM. 373 

creates existencles. This is a judgment significant only 
to the mind which regards the general as enclosing the 
particular. The formula can be repeated without giving 
any attention to the special quality of the cases which 
alone give it value. The logical form carries the day as 
against its contents. The mind, like one lost in a waste 
of snow, comes upon its own track, and regards it as a 
highway. As long as the thoughts can move along the 
fugitive traces they themselves leave, there may be phi- 
losophy of this order. 

Terenzio Mamiani (1799), who sympathized with revo- 
lutionar}' ideas, and became professor of philosophy in 
Turin, is placed by Professor Botta among ontologists. 
His views seem, however, to have had a more sober and 
realistic cast than those of Gioberti. He recognized two 

o 

distinct forms of knowledge in perception and intuition. 
By the one we arrive directly at finite relations, and by 
the other at those ideas which stand in immediate con- 
nection with Absolute Reality. We are thus on terms of 
sympathy and knowledge 'with both. 

Hegelianism has never taken vigorous root outside of 
Germanv. It has been an exotic, with no sturdv o-roAvth 
or freshness of color. Either the soil has not been deep 
enough to nourish it, or the skj' has not contained vapor 
enough to shield it. Augusto Vera (18 17) was the chief 
representative of this philosophy in Italy. He seems to 
have been an intelligent and independent student of the 
system, and to have succeeded in giving it some life. 

Positivism is represented b}- Giuseppe Ferrari and Au- 
sonio Franchi. Ferrari regards the mind as involved in 
hopeless contradictions in its speculative conclusions. It 
is only capable of knowledge within the narrow range of 
experience, where its processes can be verified and its 



374 PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY. 

errors corrected. The antinomies of the mind cannot be 
escaped, and are sure to give rise to illusions in all critical 
inquiry. We are the children of nature, and must be 
content to be led and nourished by her. True to the 
practical bent of the school, Ferrari occupied himself with 
a reconstruction of political institutions founded on ex- 
perience. 

Though philosophy has been developed in Italy under 
peculiarly stringent social and religious conditions, it has 
shown the usual variety of results. It has epitomized all 
the leading forms of speculation. It has freely received 
influences from abroad, especially those of Kant and of 
Germany. Germany has been the primary seat of ideal- 
ism, and thence it has been disseminated. To England 
empirical tendencies are chiefly to be referred, while 
France is the home of Positivism. Italy can hardly be 
said to have exerted an appreciable influence on the 
philosophy of Europe. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

§ I. Philosophy, in recent years, has been far more 
versatile, recondite, and voluminous in Germany than in 
any other country. While it has had a prevailing tend- 
ency, it has worked within that tendency under a great 
variety of methods. Its empiricism has been idealistic in 
cast. Philosophy is a presentation of the ultimate rea- 
sons of belief. Its purpose is to define the forms, nature, 
and force of knowledge. Physical phenomena arise in 
space, and are united by causes. Mental phenomena 
arise in consciousness, and are united by reasons. The 
two forms of phenomena are in such living interaction 
that causes modify reasons and reasons redirect causes. 
It is the first business of philosophy to define knowledge 
in reference to these, its two original constituents, and in 
reference to their interaction on each other. The one 
element is present to the mind as sensations, the other 
as conceptions, while the two are woven together reflect- 
ively under experience. The nature of these two terms, 
sensations and conceptions, and their respective validity, 
is the primary problem of philosophy. The answer we 
give it will modify all our notion of the nature of the 
reflective process by which sensuous impressions and 
mental ideas are united in judgments through all the 
diverse forms of knowledfje. 



37^ THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

This inquiry into the nature of these several kinds of 
mental products is one of psychology, corrected and con- 
firmed by language, history, cerebral structure, race devel- 
opment. As knowledge is a function of mind, it must 
rest back on the powers of mind for its forms, limits, and 
validity. The mind, as a means of knowing, must be de- 
fined in its relation to the things known, as the just 
method of estimating the value of knowledge. The un- 
folding of ideas within the mind, the patient combining 
of sensations in experience, can neither of them settle for 
us the foundations of truth, nor enable us to pronounce 
any final opinion on the worth of the activity with which 
we are occupied. 

Philosophy divides at once in its spirit and its methods, 
by the weight, the constructive force, which it attaches 
to the one or the other of these ultimate elements. It 
may regard sensations as the comprehensive terms of 
knowledge, and mental conceptions as their later and 
Avholly dependent products. Mind is thus the passive 
recipient of forces which find their initiative energy in 
the physical world. This philosophy may proceed so far 
as to afifirm that mental impressions are only a peculiarly 
subtile form of physical facts. This is complete material- 
ism. Rarely does thought stultify itself to this degree. 
Every movement toward this result, no matter what may 
be the precise point at which it pauses, is, with sufficient 
correctness, termed materialistic. Using a milder word, 
we may designate the tendency as empirical. All that 
destroys the balance between the mental powers and the 
sensuous material with which they stand in interaction, 
all that enhances causation and subjects the processes of 
thought to it, that makes mind merely receptive under 
the conditions of its environment, are materialistic, ab- 



METHODS OF PHILOSOPHY. 37/ 

sorbing the spirit in that vast congeries of forces which 
we recognize as matter. 

But philosophy may equally well, in its explanations, 
take the opposite direction. It may lay hold of concep- 
tions, ideas, delight in their logical expansion under the 
relations of reason, regard this movement as one self- 
luminous, and look upon sensations as simply the fixed, 
opaque points taken up in the process, the mere centres 
of crystallization. Philosophy thus assumes at once, as in 
mathematics, the self-evident nature of its fundamental 
truths, and occupies itself with the growth of these con-, 
ceptions within themselves, by which they cover the field 
of thought. Sensations as sensations are regarded as 
hardly more than the diagrams or characters by which a 
proof proceeds. 

If this movement of ideas is accepted as ample and ul- 
timate, as covering all forms of knowledge, then we have 
pure idealism. The mind holds all truth within its own 
productive contemplation, and nothing is really known 
till it is known in this form'. This method has great fasci- 
nation for the active intellect, but it is never able to in- 
clude the physical universe, in its diversified facts, within 
its survey, except in the most inadequate manner. A 
mere skeleton of relations is offered in place of those 
palpable qualities which alone give them interest. Thought 
floats as a loose web in the air, instead of lying as a close 
connection between distinct objects. The universe is no 
longer the framework of our knowledge, holding it taut 
and firm in all directions ; but this knowledge becomes, 
like the path of a bird in the air, lost as soon as it is made 
— absolutely lost, were it not for a faint trail of words it 
leaves behind it. 

Every tendency to give a weight to ideas that destroys 



3/8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

the equilibrium of knowledge, that renders it a tracing of 
the processes of thought, whether these processes run 
parallel with the connections of things or quite diverge 
from them, is fittingly termed idealistic. While this 
movement is a more vigorous, vital one than that of em- 
piricism, it suffers this grave compensation ; it is without 
end or limit. It returns comparatively empty from the 
most exhausting pursuit. Its wings are spread over a 
chaos not yet brooded into life and beauty by the creative 
mind. It is a bird that swoops out over a great abyss 
and comes back again with nothing in its bill. 

It is this tendency which we especially encounter in 
Germany. The Germans, erudite, recondite, and unweary- 
ing, have not had, in an equal degree, the sense of values. 
Their conclusions are often not current coin in the in- 
tellectual traffic of the world. They bear no stamp, and 
it calls for a second investigation to put any sufficient 
stamp upon them. The sense of reality, the consummate 
sense of all, is deficient. This idealistic movement, once 
established, is enhanced by the conditions it itself fur- 
nishes. Vision follows vision, speculation grows out of 
speculation, each remote point is made the beginning of 
another more exhaustive effort. This welter of conclu- 
sions, surging hither and thither, dashing each other into 
still finer spray, submerges and beats down all sober 
thought. The voice of Bacon thus becomes clear and 
commanding, calling for some fact as the fruit of specula- 
tion. We are recalled from our dreams to the universe 
of God, and sent in pursuit of some highway of the 
universal mind. 

The speculations of German philosophy are at once so 
extended and recondite that it can constitute no part 
of our purpose to render them with any fulness. Our 



KANT. 379 

end will be met if we conceive them correctly in their 
general method, and apprehend how far that method is 
consistent with those sober conclusions which must ex- 
pound the facts of the world, and the thoughts of men 
concerning them. We shall not strive to trace the wind- 
ings of a way which we see to lie in the wrong direction. 
Realism struggles to maintain the balance of truth. 
The mind knows, but does not in its knowing overlook 
the nature of that which is known. Sensations and ideas 
blend with each other in defining real relations. Truth 
lies between mind and mind. It is the coincidence of 
thought v/ith itself in two forms of expression, a coin- 
cidence between that which is declared in the wide 
range of reason in realities, and that which we appre- 
hend through the same medium in thought. Things lie 
between us and the eternal reason as the permanent 
media of those principles which hold the universe to- 
gether, as one compacted, intelligible, and profitable 
whole. As, in all induction, we bring a theory to the ex- 
planation of facts, and understand one through the other, 
so, in all knowledge, we confirm ideas by the sensations 
they set in order, and we illuminate sensations by the 
ideas which shine through them. Realism is substan- 
tial knowledge, form and substance, idea and content — a 
universe that embodies intelligence, and intelligence that 
discloses a universe. 

PART I. 

KANT. 

§ 2. Immanuel Kant (1724), professor at Konigsberg, 
became, by ability and by the period he occupied, the 
most influential philosopher in modern times. He did 



380 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

very much to determine the direction of thought in Ger- 
many, and to define lines of discussion in the entire exten- 
sion of philosophy. Many, even now, after the immense 
productiveness of intervening years, are raising the cry, 
'' Back to Kant." They seem to think that a safer, firmer 
position can be found in his works than in those of any 
of his successors. 

Kant gave himself, during a long life-time, unreservedly 
to speculative inquiry. He was a quaint, kindly man, 
and led a most methodical and peaceful life. His gentle- 
ness is seen in his treatment of an old German soldier 
addicted to drink, and who, as his servant, tyrannized 
over him in many little ways. He at length dismissed 
him, but when the servant was compelled to apply to him 
for a character, he gave him this testimonial : " He has 
served me long and faithfully, but he did not possess 
those qualifications which are necessary to enable one to 
wait on a feeble and impatient old man." 

Kant opens the era of modern philosophy in Germany. 
He was of Scotch descent, and took a position of protest 
against the empiricism of Hume, not altogether unlike 
that of the Scotch school. There was in him something 
of the same concessiveness to empiricism, united with a 
still firmer assertion of primitive beliefs. 

The first striking feature of his philosophy is the want of 
accord between his " Critique of the Pure Reason " and his 
*' Critique of the Practical Reason." The affirmations of 
the Practical Reason are bold and unflinching, while he 
fails, in the Pure Reason, to find for them any justification. 
He thus left the theory of knowledge and the facts under 
the theory in conflict, and this difference of results 
became an influential factor in his philosophy. Instead 
of finding in this discrepancy a disproof of one or other 



KANT. 381 

of the two Critiques, he was inclined rather to accept 
intrinsic contradictions in the forms of thought, an 
irremediable diversity in the terms of knowledge. He 
was not able to submit either tendency, the critical or 
the practical, the empirical or the intuitive, perfectly to 
the opposed one. He thus lost hold of the unity of the 
universe. 

This discrepancy of results between the pure and the 
practical reason becomes especially conspicuous in ethics 
and theology. All the motives of action may specu- 
latively be reduced to those of happiness, but over 
against these the moral consciousness places an absolute 
command: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can at 
the same time be accepted as the principle of universal 
legislation." Ethics is thus made to rest on a " categori- 
cal imperative," is brought in its laws in painful conflict 
with the impulses of the nature over which it rules, and 
must look for justification beyond the range of experience. 

We are also compelled, in connection with moral 
action, to affirm the freedom of the will. We can do 
what we ought to do. We must also assert immortality 
as the only realm wide enough for moral achievements ; 
and the existence of God, the ruler of this moral king- 
dom. These all rest on the testimony of our moral 
consciousness, yet neither the freedom of the will, nor 
immortality, nor the being of God, finds sufficient support 
in pure reason. It is necessary to understand this double 
tendency in the two Critiques, never fully overcome, the 
large concession to empirical thought, on the one side, 
and the sharp, independent assertion, on the other, as 
later philosophy is deeply involved in it. The Kant of 
the Practical Reason is a philosopher of another type from 
the Kant of the Pure Reason. Very different conclusions 



382 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

naturally follow from the two works. The rugged, incon- 
sistent strength of Kant is seen in the simple fact that 
he should entertain two critiques, a pure and a practical 
one. There can be but one critique, as there can be but 
one explanation of given facts. 

§ 3. The '' Critique of the Pure Reason " is an inquiry 
into the origin and limits of knowledge. The process is 
termed one of pure reason because it is not the tracing 
of empirical knowledge, but an antecedent rational deter- 
mination of its grounds. The limitation of our knowledge 
to experience is empiricism. To assert principles which 
transcend experience, without a previous inquiry into 
their grounds, is dogmatism. To deny these principles 
without sufficient investigation is scepticism. To inquire 
into them and to bring to them whatever justification 
belongs to them is criticism. This criticism of Kant 
rests essentially on a psychological basis, since it turns on 
the nature and limits of the knowing powers. 

The first question of moment which Kant encounters 
is that of the forms of knowledge, the antecedent ideas 
which shape inquiry. He establishes the necessary exist- 
ence of these form-elements by means of a distinction 
which everywhere appears in judgments. Judgments are 
of two kinds, analytic and synthetic. In the analytic 
judgment the predicate is already contained in the sub- 
ject, or is identical with it. Synthetic judgments may 
arise under experience, or they may transcend it ; they 
may be synthetic a posteriori, or synthetic a priori. All 
bodies have weight, is a synthetic judgment which 
expresses our knowledge of facts. Many of the judg- 
ments of mathematics, as. Two straight lines cannot 
enclose a space, are convictions prior to the facts. In 
physics, the judgment, A body must remain in its own 



i 



KANT. 383 

state, whether of rest or of motion, unless acted on by 
another body ; or In philosophy, the assertion. All events 
hold within themselves some relation of sequence, are 
synthetic a priori judgments. These judgments demand 
antecedent Ideas on which they rest. These prior notions 
are the pure forms of knowledge. Without them knowl- 
edge would be Impossible. 

The empirical philosophy has come to admit these 
pure forms, but derives them from a protracted race -ex- 
perience, fastened on the mind by Inheritance ; a view not 
very unlike that of Innate Ideas, the traces of a previous 
experience, as accepted by Plato. Empiricism regards 
resemblance as the all-inclusive relation between things, 
but resemblance, as a form of thought, must be ante- 
cedent to the phenomena it sets in order. We do not 
take resemblance, causation, from the facts they expound, 
but bring them to those facts, as a condition of under- 
standing them. Later empiricism thus practically agrees 
with Kant in recognizing synthetic judgments, which 
hold the form-elements of- knowledge. The two systems 
differ from each other in regard to the manner in which 
these antecedent forms are attained. We attach great 
importance to the fact that, after protracted discussion 
and much acute analysis, the two schools touch each 
other In recognizing elements in many judgments which 
are prior to the experience of the individual. The In- 
quiries remain, whether the knowing of the individual Is 
not all the knowing there is, whether this knowing Is not 
always, and has not always been, identical with Itself In 
its essential conditions. If our present classifications 
imply a notion of resemblance, our tracing of events an 
idea of causation, have they not always contained these 
implications? 



384 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

The empiricist neglects, or touches very lightly, the 
point of most difficulty. Things may be sorted mechani- 
cally by likeness of qualities, as sand and gravel and cob- 
ble in the drift of a river. Sequences may be repeated 
organically by virtue of their agreement, and so become 
habits. The cerebral states incident to thought may 
tend to renew themselves with increased facility for the 
same reason. But these facts do not touch the critical 
point. That still remains. It is, how do we know these 
and like things for what they are ? The things them- 
selves do not carry knowledge with them. These repeti- 
tions do not alter the terms of knowing when knowing 
comes. How can the analytic conditions of knowledge 
as a mental process be altered by any number of experi- 
ences of some other inferior order which occur antece- 
dently to it ? Empiricism fails us at the critical moment 
of transition. The empiricist, like the alchemist, is plen- 
tiful in information and full of method till the ingredients 
are all in the alembic, but then they are left to yield slag 
in place of gold. How does a cerebral association become 
the unity of thought? How does organic continuity be- 
come a connection of ideas? How does a transmitted 
tendency pass into a form-element in knowledge ? These 
questions, which involve the central difficulty, are left 
without an answer. The required coincidence is assumed 
as if it were the simplest thing possible. In fact, it is 
the most obscure thing possible. Till this difficulty is 
removed, the act of knowing, with its present analytic 
terms, must be left in its integrity as the real fact with 
which we have to deal. 

The condensed form which perception assumes in re- 
peated exercise does not aid the empiricist in bridging 
the chasm which divides him from his goal. The judg- 



KANT. 385 

ments ordinarily suppressed In perception are, on needful 
occasion, renewed. The most rapid perception contains 
these as latent terms. They are not, as in the alleged 
transformation of organic processes into knowledge, a 
putting of the clear and plain in place of the obscure, but 
the obscure in place of the plain, the rapid in place of 
the slow, the abbreviated for the full process. This is a 
constant transformation. The turning of the absence of 
knowledge into knowing is another thing, quite. The 
evoking of the clear connections of pure mathematics 
out of the depths of animal being is a kind of alchemy of 
its own order, and must be looked to closely. 

Having proceeded so far in the proof of a priori forms, 
Kant was suddenly and wholly turned aside from the 
natural conclusions contained in the doctrine. He ac- 
cepted these form-elements under a misleading analogy 
as moulds, or methods, of thought, supplied by the mind 
itself. They are thus not relations which belong to the 
objects of knowledge and constitute a part of their revela- 
tion, but forms under whicli the ego, in its own transcen- 
dental unity, shapes the objects offered to it in perception. 
Here is an elevation of mind which profoundly debases 
it. Here is an unexpected slip of method, which alters 
wholly the nature of knowledge, introduces much confu- 
sion and useless subtilty of thought, and remains to be 
wholly eliminated, as a first condition of the integrity of 
our faculties. 

This view makes knowing something quite other than 
what we have thought it to be. It is no longer penetrat- 
ing things like light, sharing the light that is in them, 
taking them up at their own intellectual values in the 
estimates of mind ; it is putting upon them forms and 
colors all our own. The molten metal is not crystallizing, 

25 



386 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

it is filling moulds we have prepared for it. Knowing is 
not knowing, but transforming the passive material of 
knowledge into impressions native to ourselves. Know- 
ing is no more an out-going movement than is digestion. 
The only unity in digestion is that animals of the same 
sort build up like food Into similar tissues. Knowing is 
hopelessly relative, equally in its rational as In its sensu- 
ous forms. Sensations in their endless variety are, in- 
deed, more true to their real character than are insights, 
since these suggest a reality and universality that, after 
all, do not belong to them. 

§ 4. The illusions thus put upon us are of the most mis- 
leading character. If space- relations do not belong to 
sensuous objects, if events do not follow each other in a 
sequence beyond our thought, if reality is only a subject- 
ive impression, what remains of knowledge ? Nothing 
more than the coherence of dreams. Thus there is intro- 
duced into the philosophy of Kant that anomalous and 
fanciful term, things-in-themselves. Things-in-themselves 
are forever beyond us. This philosophy, like many an- 
other, ends in destroying what it undertook to expound. 
It does not, as a theory, return to knowledge — knowledge, 
with its indefeasible hold on the human mind prior to all 
philosophy — with more light, but rather as a gusty wind 
which scatters a mist and leaves only empty air behind. 
Yet we are -to be absolute, cock-sure, about the new phi- 
losophy which sets at naught all previous conviction. If 
the mind, in the very act of knowing, volatilizes its ma- 
terial of all sorts into colored vapor, then knowing is not 
only not what we have thought it to be, it loses all inter- 
est for us as a valid process. What validity remains is 
that of the universality of illusion. The necromancy of 
the mind is so complete that it perverts all things alike in 



KANT. 387 

laying hold of them, and is the helpless victim of its own 
tricks. 

Experience brings no confirmation to this view. To be 
sure, the perversion is so extended that one cannot break 
away from it. It controls the criticism as perfectly as the 
thing criticised, and therefore is beyond correction. Yet 
this is not quite true. If events owe their relation in 
succession to our conception of them while they lie before 
the mind, they cannot owe it to the same source when 
they proceed independently of us, and return, at a later 
stage, to our observation. How is the fact to be ex- 
plained that our experience is not a patchwork of phe- 
nomena — progressive here under the constructive forms 
of our thought, and dissolved there into chaos by lying 
beyond our contemplation — but Is a continuous, coherent 
whole? The visible spaces and the Invisible ones, the 
events observed and those unobserved, must rest under 
the same relations, or they cannot cohere, when united, in 
experience. They do cohere ; the forms, therefore, which 
contain them are not put upon them by the mind, but in- 
here in them as their own eternal order. Our knowing, 
by thus bridging spaces and times beyond our ken, shows 
that it involves simply an apprehension of objective con- 
nections, ever true to themselves. The relations are per- 
manent, though our knowledge of the phenomena which 
fill them out is very partial. In acts of imagination we 
find it necessary to complete the events which hold the 
forms in coherent extension. In actual experience, ma- 
terial, arising under all the interruptions of observation, 
holds spaces and events In firm coherence, equally under 
the eye and beyond the eye. 

Dr. HIckok has urged most convincingly that no com- 
mon knowledge, no '* one whole of all space," no '' one 



388 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

whole of all time," would be possible to men, if form-ele- 
ments were simply subjective, did not pertain to the 
things which they set in order. We enter into knowledge 
as a common possession which belongs to us all, because 
it is objective to us all. But knowledge is enclosed 
within these forms, and can be no more objective than 
these are. Our fantasies are not possessed in common, 
even though evoked by the same objects. The words 
object and objective may be used to express subjects of 
contemplation within the mind, but these subjects are 
not the basis of a concurrent experience. We are com- 
pelled to come in contact with true objects, real events, 
phenomena that have fixed form-elements, as the condi- 
tion of an experience in common. 

The assertion that form-elements pertain to the mind, 
and not to the things known, is made in opposition to 
universal conviction, and so breaks down our just faith 
in our powers. No philosophy is at liberty to invalidate 
the normal action of the mind. It is not competent for 
reason to discredit itself. A theory of philosophy that 
opposes itself to human knowledge can carry no proof. 
It must look for its establishment to the very powers it 
has discredited. The facts to be expounded, to wit, our 
universal conviction of realities, must set limits to our 
explanatory process. The conclusion that knowledge is 
subjective -in its forms is equally opposed to popular and 
scientific conviction. What is it in astronomy that we 
are measuring? Spaces, times, not dimensions of a men- 
tal form-element. How otherwise can we understand 
the exactitude and perfect agreement of these measure- 
ments ? 

We cannot escape objective reality. The notion of 
reality carries with it, in its inevitable application, exter- 



KANT. 389 

nal facts. But if one form-element transcends the mind 
and reaches real being, they all do that belong to the 
same group. Time and causation, in the experience they 
order, demand not only outward facts, they require 
changeable forms of those facts. What are these changes 
which collectively constitute the universe? What can 
they be but the universe itself? We shall lose the mind 
as we lose it in dreams, if we lose the universe, its intel- 
lectual foil. Certainly the presumption is that the appar- 
ent is the real ; a presumption that, in a narrow form, 
calls for very positive proof to overcome it, and, in a wide 
form, is almost beyond rebuttal. 

§5. Kant having substituted form-elements native to 
mind, for relations native to things — inherent in the 
rationality of things, itself inherent in the mind of God — 
was ready to entertain the suggestion that things might 
have wholly inapproachable natures of their own. Thus 
we have that most fanciful and anomalous conception, 
the thing-in-itself, as the possible solution of many dififi- 
culties. We may concei-ve events in one way, it is 
thought, while they themselves may occur in a very dif- 
ferent way. We cannot regard the world as ruled other- 
wise than by causes ; yet things-in-themselves may admit 
liberty. The thing-in-itself impresses the mind, but 
owing to the mind's own peculiar qualities, these impres- 
sions may not stand for the facts as they are. We have 
convictions, but those convictions are not necessarily 
the counterpart of realities. We are like persons subject 
to illusions. The images in the mind play loosely about 
objects, and we have no way of determining their corre- 
spondence. The dogmatism of the Scotch philosophy, 
that we know the very object directly and unmistakably 
in perception, is sober, wholesome assertion compared 



390 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

with these uncertain images of sensation, behind which 
things-in-themselves play hide-and-seek with us. 

In a sound philosophy we have no occasion, and no 
ground, for the distinction between things as we know 
them and things as they may be in themselves. We have 
no occasion, for as things appear to us so are they, for all 
the ends of knowledge and use. This is the fact covered 
by causation and the uniformity of nature. Knowing is 
a valid process consistent with itself. Sound philosophy 
gives no entrance to the feeling that knowing a thing once 
we need to know it again, in some other way, in order to 
know it. Nor is there any ground on which we can ration- 
ally introduce into our speculation the thing-in-itself, as 
possibly other than what we find it to be. Our vision is 
single. We are not troubled with two images which we 
cannot bring together. Under the notion of causation 
we put realities, energies, back of phenomena, as their 
sources. The causes and the effects which express them 
are exactly commensurate. We cannot suppose the 
underlying energies to be in any way other than what 
they are indicated to be in the phenomena which accom- 
pany them. Such a supposition is wholly gratuitous, 
without any possible reason. We know matter, mind, 
fully and finally, in knowing the phenomena to which 
they give rise. There is not a residuum of being beyond 
these manifestations. It is, that we may explain these 
phenomena", and for this purpose only, that we accept 
things, causes. We have no other phenomena from 
which to infer other causes, other kinds of being, things- 
in-themselves. Things-in-themselves are the merest 
chimeras, taken up on no ground whatever. Never have 
any terms more extraneous and fanciful found their way 
into philosophy. 



KANT. 391 

We do not fully know things, simply because we do 
not perfectly apprehend the entire circle of phenomena 
which belong to them in experience. We may enlarge 
observation, we may multiply the conditions of action, and 
so enter more perfectly into a knowledge of things and 
persons. We have not the slightest occasion to say, at 
the end, things-in-themselves may be very different from 
what we have now been led to think they are. We have 
no reason, having determined the sphericity of the earth, 
to despondingly remark, it may, after all, be a cube. 
Cubes may make upon us the impressions of spheres. 
Such conceptions are utterly empty, the mere quivering 
of intellectual vision. The remedy for this intoxication 
of speculation is rest and sobriety. 

We may make the supposition that there are other 
forms of perception than those which belong to us ; but 
such a supposition does not alter the nature and ade- 
quacy of our knowledge. It is not to be thought that 
sensations of another variety or intensity would stand in 
contradiction with our present experience, or fail to fall 
into harmony with it. The blind and the deaf know as 
we know, so far as they know. It is the introduction into 
philosophy of such conception as things-in-themselves 
which renders it vague, remote, fanciful. 

Forms define knowledge. By virtue of one of these 
ideas, causation, we infer noumena, we place realities be- 
neath appearances. Noumena play no other rational part 
than that of informing phenomena. Our entire hold on 
them is through phenomena. To speak, then, of the thing- 
in-itself, of spirit-in-itself, of God-in-Himself, is to fall into 
a confused, utterly unphilosophical attitude. It is an 
effort to bring forward to the imagination another set of 
phenomena, wholly foreign to our experience, for which 



392 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

we have neither use nor proof. Noumena, as another set 
of phenomena, can play no part in thought. They must 
remain noumena in order to meet the ends of reason. 

We know noumena to the same extent, precisely, as 
we know the phenomena of which they are the counter- 
parts. Spencer, with his conceivable and inconceivable, 
his known and unknown, is, in philosophy, lingering in 
the penumbra of image worship. We know God in the 
degree in which we apprehend the things we refer to him. 
To wish to know him otherwise is an irrational hunger 
of the senses. 

Kant, in introducing the thing-in-itself, overleaps the 
limits of all knowledge, and brings back thence concep- 
tions fitted merely to confound it. The terms of knowl- 
edge must all lie within knowledge itself. The man in 
the moon is no more foreign to anthropology than is the 
thing-in-itself alien to philosophy. 

Kant puts the doctrine of the thing-in-itself to various 
uses, and the notion has haunted speculation since his 
time. It contains the provisional explanation of difficul- 
ties too hard for the ordinary processes of solution. For 
this work it is admirably fitted. As we know nothing 
about the thing-in-itself, we may set it at any service we 
please, in any way we please. We may say the interac- 
tion of matter and mind may involve no real impossibility, 
since both matter and mind may be wholly different from 
what we think them to be. 

The perplexity and the explanation both arise from 
not accepting the true limits of knowledge, and proceed- 
ing to occupy the mind with illusory images of the imag- 
ination. When we have brought together, under one 
form-element, two phenomenal terms, the imagination is 
satisfied. When the bat has hit the ball, we accept the 



KANT. 393 

motion which follows. We forget that the Inner ground 
of the sequence lies wholly beyond us, as much so when 
the relation lies between two things — the bat and the 
ball — as when it lies between things and thoughts — the 
bat and the ball, on the one hand, and our theories con- 
cerning them, on the other. The imagination has not the 
same definite terms to offer in the second as in the first 
case, but there is no more knowledge of the nature of the 
connection, hence no more difificulty in accepting it, in 
the one instance than in the other. Both are fixed con- 
nections in experience, and, as such, first terms in know- 
ing. A possible unity between things-in-themselves and 
mind-in-itself as a ground of comprehension is mere illu- 
sion. The unity of the world does not lie in phenomena, 
but in the intellectual coherence of their relations. Dis- 
tinction, separation, have their expression in phenomena. 
We must transcend these at some stage of thought, and 
pass into the unity of spiritual being. That spiritual 
being can assert itself is an ultimate truth, whose form 
and fitness we know, but whose interior connections we 
cannot affirm, for the very simple reason that there are 
no such connections. The search after them is another 
symptom of the thing-in-itself, of the desire, in gratifica- 
tion of the imagination, to put phenomena back of phe- 
nomena in an endless series. 

§ 6. A correct understanding of Kant turns on an ap- 
prehension of the powers of mind as presented by him. 
While intuitive philosophy owes much to Kant, the 
meaning of terms has been so modified and the point 
of view so altered as to make the conception of Kant 
quite obsolete. Sense, understanding, and reason do not 
now designate what he indicated by them. Sense stands 
for the mind's knowledge of phenomena, whether exter- 



394 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

nal or internal. The understanding covers the presenta- 
tive, reflective powers — memory, imagination, judgment 
— employed in the intellectual construction of these phe- 
nomena. Reason is the power of apprehending ultimate 
form-elements. As Kant regarded these forms as in- 
volved in the perceptive and reflective acts themselves, 
he had no occasion for reason as insight. Reason with 
him furnished certain ideas, but they were transcendental 
ideas, ideas which could not be brought within the moulds 
furnished in perception and reflection, ideas which could 
not justify themselves, therefore, either to the sense or 
the understanding. These notions wer-e the conception 
of the soul as a simple substance, the conception of the 
world as a unity which underlies all physical phenomena, 
the conception of God as the unity of all objects whatso- 
ever. These conceptions are not, with Kant, products of 
perception or reflection, as both of these proceed under 
forms of thought too restricted for them. Hence, when 
we undertake to reflect on any of these ultimate ideas, 
we find that they transcend knowledge in experience. 
The form-elements applicable to the objects of sense and 
the processes of consciousness are no longer available. 
There is thus a conflict introduced in our knowledge. 
By the reason we are brought under the influence of 
transcendental notions, and yet, by virtue of the inade- 
quacy of those forms of thought by which we work 
up the material furnished by the senses, we can make 
nothing satisfactory of them. Thus Kant accepts, as it 
were, the conclusion of Locke and Hume in reference 
to what we term knowledge, making it a product of 
experience ; and at the same time adds to it, by this 
apprehension of the reason, an outer horizon of inap- 
proachable ideas. These exert an immense, modifying 



KANT. 395 

force on all our thinking. Noumena, with Kant, were not 
so much the realities which give substance to phenomena, 
as supersensuous forms of being impressed upon us by 
the reason, but inapproachable by any mode of exposition. 
Thus the world of realities lay farther back than the in- 
tuitionalist is wont to conceive it, and so separate from 
the world of experience as to be inapproachable from it. 

The doctrine of Kant was distinguished from empiri- 
cism by the a priori character of its form-elements, but 
this was a consideration, after all, of secondary impor- 
tance. The chief difference lay in this apprehension of 
ideas whose rational value it could not make out. It 
recognized a profound cleft in our intellectual possessions, 
and put the richer moiety on the farther and inaccessible 
side. This conclusion was not unlike that of Hamilton, 
who asserted vigorously the relativity of knowledge, and 
the consequent inapprehensibility of the Infinite, and yet 
saved the conception as an object of faith. The mind is 
thus left in the very anomalous position of having two 
distinct sources of impressions, in the sense and the rea- 
son, impressions which the reflective powers can unite in 
no coherent, intellectual product. Thus a feeling of con- 
fusion and contradiction, of terms too large for its meas- 
urements, overtakes the intellect in all its speculative 
processes. The reflective powers stand allied with those 
of perception, and so fail to expound the higher presenta- 
tions of the reason. Intuitionalism restores the integrity 
of the mind by referring to the reason an insight simply 
into form-elements, and into all the form-elements requi- 
site for any and every process of thought. The mind is 
thus thoroughly coherent in its action. Every reflective 
act has its transcendental element, and the sense of real- 
ity grows with this perpetual interweaving of the lower 



39^ THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

and higher terms in experience. The unity of the world 
lies in the unity of thought, and extension of thought 
carries this unity with it. Thought brings all the terms 
of knowledge into coherent relation, and deepens above 
and below the sense of unity. But the unity which the 
mind establishes, it finds rather than institutes. Its in- 
quiries seem to it, from the outset, to pertain to realities, 
and so it is the universe that it discovers to be one in 
construction. The mind does not look deeper than the 
facts it deals with for unity. It finds unity in those facts, 
and through them unity in those realities for which they 
stand. The noumena are apprehended directly through 
the phenomena which interpret them, as the meaning is 
arrived at by the words which express it. We have no 
occasion for any transcendental unity in the mind itself, 
in the world itself, in the spiritual universe, above and 
beyond that suggested to us in a rational rendering of our 
own experience. Such a rendering, at every stage, leads 
us to the transcendental, that is, the spiritual. 

Constructive realism unites noumena and phenomena, 
the transcendental and the sensuous, in the most imme- 
diate and absolute way. Noumena are the ever-present 
realities which all appearances cover and present. We 
have no occasion to institute any inquiry whatever con- 
cerning noumena beyond the phenomena under which 
they arise. . Noumena and phenomena are inseparable 
terms in reason, each expressing the value of the other. 
They are the reverse and obverse of the coin of thought. 
Kant, having accepted the form of the thought as a lim- 
itation of the mind, and not as its highest rational insight, 
naturally regarded noumena as remote realities, which lie 
wholly separate from phenomena as subjective impres- 
sions of mind. They might stand in one or another rela- 



KANT. 397 

tion to our sensuous experience, or be quite foreign to it ; it 
was impossible to determine the nature of the connection. 

While Kant himself was not willing to accept the ideal- 
ism so thoroughly contained in his doctrine, those who 
followed him found it to be the most assured of infer- 
ences. If space and causation are form-elements put upon 
objects by the mind itself, then objects lose at once, as 
pertaining to themselves, those conditions which lead us 
to regard them as external. The definite position and 
inflexible energy which stand with us for outside reality 
are not due to it. Sensuous phenomena owe all their dis- 
tinctive features to the mind itself, and may, therefore, 
far more simply be referred to it than to external realities 
which they in no way represent. Indeed, the distinction 
between outside and inside disappears. The form-ele- 
ments, space and consciousness, causation and liberty, on 
which vv^e had made this division, lose their differences ; 
all are equally limitations of mind. None of them carry 
us beyond the mind. The philosophy of Kant, having 
swept away this most fundamental difference between 
physical and mental phenomena, had no ground on which 
to maintain the radical character of the distinction. This 
conclusion, inevitable as it was, Kant was not willing to 
draw. He strove to hold on to things-in-themselves as the 
basis of physical phenomena. He thus separated himself 
from Berkeley, who allowed physical noumena to drop 
out, and referred all phenomena directly back to God. 
Kant had such a relentless grasp on the truths of experi- 
ence, as given in practical reason, as to check positively 
the destructive criticism of pure speculation. 

§ 7. Kant, accepting the sense and the understanding 
as coherently interpreting experience under forms of 
limited application ; accepting the reason as furnishing 



398 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

transcendental ideas not capable of exposition under the 
ordinary forms of knowledge, destroyed the unity of the 
mind. The mind, having attained in the reason the notion 
of self, can, after all, make nothing of it. If it strives to 
ascribe to this self spirituality, unity, spontaneity, per- 
petuity, working under the forms of the sense and the 
understanding, it finds itself balked at every turn. In 
using the processes by which we interpret experience, in 
an effort to expound that which lies beyond experience, 
we necessarily put upon statements which we wish to 
offer as absolute truth the transient, unreal forms of our 
sensuous life. 

When we come to the second idea given by the reason, 
the unity of physical phenomena, we again encounter the 
same difficulty, the inapplicability of our intellectual re- 
sources to the matter in hand. There thus arise the four 
antinomies of Kant. Each antinomy is made of thesis 
and antithesis, assertion and negation, yet neither is ap- 
plicable to the cosmological idea. The first antinomy 
pertains to the duration and extension of the world. 
Thesis, the world had a beginning in time, and has limits 
in space. Antithesis, the world is without beginning in 
time, and without limits in space. We must interpret 
our experience under one or other of these statements, 
but neither of them is satisfactory, or explanatory of the 
ultimate unity of things. This shows that, in applying 
our logical methods to transcendental terms, we are carry- 
ing them beyond the region which they expound. We 
cannot afifirm the infinite continuation and extension of 
events, for if we do we thereby lose all unity, the object 
we are pursuing. Neither can we assign the physical 
world definite period and distinct dimensions, for if we 
do our times and spaces are arbitrary. So, again, we have 



KANT. 399 

lost the unity of reason, a conception returning Into Itself 
with light upon every part of it. We observe, in passing, 
the close relation of this antinomy to Hamilton's law of 
the conditioned, as applied to causation. 

The mind is thus left, under the philosophy of Kant, 
hopelessly stretching beyond itself, aware of that it can- 
not attain ; receptive of a problem too profound for its 
solution. Is this result incident to this particular philos- 
ophy, or does it stand for a defect in intellectual struct- 
ure ? Must criticism always issue, as Kant affirms, in a 
transcendental philosophy, a philosophy of unavoidable, 
but unreconciled, assertions? Intuitionalism recognizes 
the infinite as a form-element applicable to time and space 
and personal potentiality. That this form-element shall 
not be used where it does not belong is as essential to 
comprehension as that it shall be freely employed where 
it does apply. All things, all events, all acts are finite. 
They can only offer themselves to us in our experience 
as finite. On that condition, in that method, they enter 
experience. But, being finite in every particular, they 
cannot, by any multiplication, become infinite. The in- 
finite is not the indefinitely large, but the absolutely 
illimitable. Space and time and personal potentiality 
are capable of infinite receptivity of the phenomena to 
which they apply. These phenomena are in no way 
straitened by their form-elements. Space is not made 
up of particular extensions. These in no measure fill it 
or exhaust it. The acts of God do not weary him. His 
potentiality, after the greatest imaginable expression, re- 
mains precisely what it was before. Yet each act is, and 
must be, finite, as each moment is finite. The act is an 
act, the moment a moment, only on that condition. 

Hence what we must rationally affirm of things and 



400 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

events Is definite extension and duration. Their nature 
and their unity require this completeness within them- 
selves. What we affirm of the forms under which they 
arise is absolute freedom, infinity. The precise reason of 
each period and dimension we may be unable to render, 
not because there is no reason, but because our grasp of 
the premises is not yet sufficiently firm and ample. The 
thought of God returns into itself. Its unity is complete 
in its parts and in their relation to each other. There 
may be distraction and disturbance in us, but not in it. 
This unity is not transcendental, though a subject of in- 
exhaustible inquiry. If we accept the appropriate form- 
elements, and learn, under a rational rendering of experi- 
ence, how to apply them, we shall be brought in contact 
with profound problems, but not insolvable ones. We 
may push our footsteps indefinitely backward and forward, 
and yet not lose ourselves in a confused and confusing 
homogeneity or heterogeneity of events. On the con- 
trary, they are in orderly motion, ever resolving them- 
selves into a more visible whole. Thus the sphericity 
of the world is not a term of sensuous experience, but it 
becomes an intellectual element of which we are assured, 
and one which brings no contradiction or disturbance to 
our senses in their narrowest action. 

We have, therefore, no occasion to regard thesis and 
antithesis as logical modes of thought inapplicable to 
those higher ideas which remain transcendental under 
them. Our powers are indeed limited, each to its own 
office, and bring emptiness and confusion if pushed into 
a strange field. Used in relation to each other, they are 
harmonious and concurrent in the pursuit of truth. The 
sense is confined to phenomena, and to a certain range 
within those phenomena. We cannot, therefore, construct 



KANT. 401 

under the sensuous Imagination supersensuous things, Hke 
force, nor even phenomenal things, hke molecules, which 
escape the range of the senses. The understanding has 
for its subject-matter intellectual relations, and can, there- 
fore, do nothing with simple, primitive terms. The rea- 
son gives us form-elements, but cannot, in their use, go 
beyond their bare recognition. It remains for us, under 
experience, to determine the method and extent of their 
application, their harmonious connection with each other 
in covering the entire ground of inquiry. These several 
powers fall in with each other at once in a wise attain- 
ment of knowledge. Knowledge is the product which 
arises from the use of them all in their own offices. They 
are concurrent by virtue of being confined each to its 
own proper activity. No one power, used in just relation 
to other powers, brings any contradiction to them. An- 
tinomies arise only Avhen we push powers beyond them- 
selves, or allow them to fall short of themselves. 

The second antinomy pertains to, what Kant terms 
quality. Thesis, Every composite substance in the world 
is made up of simple parts. Antithesis, There exists 
nothing simple. The last proposition, there exists noth- 
ing simple, derives its plausibility from the fact that the 
processes of multiplication and division have no limits. 
Matter is said to be infinitely divisible because the act of 
division, as an intellectual effort, assigns itself no bounds. 
The infinitesimal, under regression, is as vanishing a term 
as the infinite, under progression. Space accepts no final 
unit in either direction. But this fact brings no confusion 
to cosmic unity. The cosmos is not an affair of space, 
but of extensions within space, and must, therefore, take 
up its first terms, and close its last terms, under definite 
measurements. The doctrine of atoms and molecules 
26 



402 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

brings no difficulty to the reason, no more than stones of 
fixed sizes to the architect. The dimensions of atoms are 
not assigned them by the nature of space, but by their 
own constructive purposes. They involve no more mys- 
tery by virtue of their minuteness than does the world, 
which, so far as space Is concerned, might have been 
larger or less large. The inexhaustibility of space, its 
ability to take in every measurement, makes it the per- 
fectly plastic matrix for all material creation. This cre- 
ation receives definite dimensions under its own unity. 
This antinomy is virtually a reproduction of the old rid- 
dle, the search for a limit of a mental act of subdivision 
within itself — the contrasting the vagueness of a pure, 
comprehending process with the familiar firmness of the 
facts which arise under it, and fill it out. 

The third antinomy lies between causality and freedom. 
Thesis, Freedom, in the transcendental sense of the 
term, is a reality ; or there may be absolute, uncaused 
beginnings of series of efforts. Antithesis, All things, 
without exception, take place in the world in accordance 
with natural law. Kant arrives at these contradictory 
conceptions, the last of which he regards as applicable to 
our experience as interpreted by the understanding, and 
the former as a truth we would fain assert under the 
transcendental reason, by accepting the physical render- 
ing of the world under causation, and at the same time 
making no provision in his psychology for its spiritual 
rendering under spontaneity. The antinomy expresses 
the force of empiricism, contending with the insight of 
reason. The mind's powers are made to exclude each 
other. Let the reason, as insight, supply the notion of 
spontaneity as the constructive idea under which pure 
thought arises, precisely as physical connections arise 



.ill 



KANT. 403 

under causation, and the antinomy is lost at once. The 
two principles become, Physical events follow each other 
under causation. Intellectual events follow each other 
under reasons ; and reasons involve the spontaneous 
action of the mind. We have no occasion to introduce 
a mystical notion of things-in-themselves in order to 
secure a basis of freedom. We have no occasion to affirm 
transcendental notions, when the truth lies at the very 
heart of our most personal experience. Why should we, 
with Kant, dive for pearls, if, having attained them, we 
cannot land them? 

The fourth antinomy is allied to the third. Thesis, 
There belongs to the world an absolutely necessary being. 
Antithesis, Nothing is absolutely necessary. Under the 
notion of causation, the universe, as a whole and in every 
part of it, Is perfectly conditioned In each step of proce- 
dure. Its coherence Is that of a stitch, which ravels at 
once if broken in any portion of it. The universe thus 
offers intense mechanical cohesion, but no unity. It 
lacks unity, because these rigid relations accept no limits 
in time, and so give the mind, seeking to find a purpose 
in them, a construction rounding to a completion, no hold. 
The world becomes rationally intelligible only when spon- 
taneity, as shaping power, pervades causation, as pliant 
material ; when mind plays upon it and subordinates it 
to Its uses. If we affirm the freedom of the mind, as the 
form-element giving opportunity for a rational sequence, 
our two propositions no longer constitute an antinomy, 
but apply to different phenomena In their truly construct- 
ive interlock. On the one side, we escape waywardness, 
on the other, constraint ; and the universe, with a push of 
its own and a guidance from within, moves toward the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 



404 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

§ 8. When we come to the third transcendental convic- 
tion, that of the unconditioned, we can, of course, make 
no progress by an exposition resting on sense perceptions 
and logical processes. Kant takes up the several argu- 
ments for the being of God, and finds them inadequate. 
The ontological argument fails, as a transcendental notion 
of God does not carry with it its own reality. No con- 
ception in experience establishes itself as a fact beyond 
the mind which entertains it. 

If we start out on the cosmologlcal argument, we find 
ourselves utterly unable to rise above the series of causes 
whose backward path we are pursuing. If we turn to 
the teleological proof, no more by advancing than by re- 
treating, no more in pursuing the progress of events than 
in tracing their origin, can we transcend the stream on 
which we are voyaging. Our movement, in all directions, 
is within the limits of experience, and we cannot press 
beyond them. Our experience is sensuous, everywhere 
finite, cohering under causes, and has nothing to disclose 
concerning the unconditioned. The form-elements we 
are using are also wholly subjective, personal, private. 
They help us to run, in a familiar way, along the con- 
tinuous lines of events, but have no absolute message of 
any sort. The idea of God remains wholly transcenden- 
tal. The doctrine of Spencer, and of all empirical think- 
ing, approaches closely to that of Kant. The Unknown 
is a term of thought we cannot escape, and cannot ex- 
pound. The idea of God was, with Kant, a light beyond 
our experience, which goes before us in our search after 
unity, yet fails to lead us to any real revelation. 

All these conflicts, these lines which run between light 
and darkness, with no interflow of the two, no intermin- 
gling of shades, as if each were a wall to the other — are at 



KANT. 405 

once escaped, If we find within experience the powers by 
which we transcend it, indeed, are constantly transcend- 
ing it, in all absolute truth. If spontaneous power is the 
ruling idea of reason, if the infinite is a form-element ap- 
plicable to this personal potentiality in its highest expres- 
sion, then we have that in the universe about us and in 
our own rendering processes which leads us straight to 
God. There is footing by which the vaulting mind is 
momentarily transcending its sensuous terms. The light 
and the darkness flow into each other, and the light grows 
amain. 

§ 9. The form-elements of thought, the conditions 
which render it a coherent, luminous movement, are, 
according to Kant, involved in each faculty as a part of 
its own nature. Faculties, as faculties, carry with them 
their own conditions, as do forces. This doctrine empha- 
sizes the division of the faculties, and in the same degree 
reduces the unity of the mind. It lays stress on receptive 
quality, and gives no heed to penetrative, revealing in- 
sight. It makes each form of knowledge a given kind of 
opacity, subjecting the light to its own reflecting and dis- 
solving qualities, not a transparent body through which 
the light moves freely, with inner and outer disclosure. 

Perception carries with it, according to Kant, space as 
an a priori term of order. Space is not a product of 
experience, but its antecedent condition, contained in the 
sense itself. We cannot escape it in any construction of 
external facts. Space is simple, single, ultimate. Space 
accepts infinity, a relation wholly beyond experience. 
Kant, notwithstanding this pure subjective character of 
space, insisted on some reality as underlying perception. 
Without such a reality the uniform experience which lies 
between man and man could not be explained. But that 



406 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

something which is the immediate occasion of sensation 
is of the most indeterminate character. We can refer no 
form-elements to it. If we speak of it as external, we 
only mean that the mind, in regarding it, projects it 
beyond itself. This something gives occasion to the 
illusion of externality. Kant, unwilling to cast it aside, 
accepted it as an utterly obscure noumenon, the mys- 
tery of the thing-in-itself, in which, possibly, the con- 
structive coherence of relations, apparently contradictory, 
may inhere. '' The things which we perceive are not 
what we take them to be, nor their relations of such in- 
trinsic nature as they appear to us. If we make abstrac- 
tion of ourselves as knowing subjects, or even of the sub- 
jective constitution of our senses generally, all the qualities, 
all the relations of objects in space and time, yes, and 
even space and time themselves, disappear. As phenom- 
ena they cannot exist really, /^r se, but only in us ; what 
may be the character of things-In-themselves, and wholly 
separated from our receptive sensibility, remains entirely 
unknown to us." 

A more fatal attitude toward human knowledge cannot 
readily be taken than this of the entire subjectivity of its 
forms, one and all. The most sensuous impression and 
the deepest insight become one in character. Knowledge, 
as knowledge, lies under its form-elements, and if these 
do not touch realities, it becomes such stuff as dreams 
are made of. Our conceptions rest on the facts like mists 
on the mountain side ; they may take any fantastic form 
that comes to them ; they serve simply to conceal the 
things which lie under them. Truth is thus only the 
coherence of a vision within itself. The mind has not 
grappled realities. All its deep-sea soundings yield noth- 
ing but fanciful measurements. Such a fundamental 



KANT. 407 

scepticism of our own powers cannot be made to rest 
securely on the powers themselves. It is, and must for- 
ev^er remain, a wayward speculation. All assertions we 
choose to make about God or immortality, under the 
implication that these objects of thought lie without the 
relations of time or of space, are utterly unintelligible. 
The reason is striving to hold on to the substance of 
thought, having dismissed its forms. It is by the form 
alone that the reality is reached, and a reality, without 
the rational presentation which pertains to it, is absolute 
emptiness. All that is truly transcendental is visionary. 
It is absurd to raise the question of immortality under 
the notion of time, and answer it beyond that notion. 
If our notion of time is subjective only, what possible 
pertinence is there to the idea of immortality? Can we 
speak of a permanent reality in color, when color is 
simply impressional ? 

The mind has, in consciousness, the example of a form- 
element which does belong exclusively to mental activity. 
It may, therefore, contrast it with space, as the form-ele- 
ment of external objects. We cannot, as shown by this 
example, regard forms as indifferent to the realities that 
find expression under them. The forms are involved in 
the very nature of these realities. The realities are pre- 
cisely what the forms pertaining to them reveal them to 
be. We cannot put consciousness on physical things, 
nor space on mental acts, by the manner of contempla- 
tion. 

The improbability involved in the assertion that per- 
ception gives space relations to objects destitute of them 
is exceedingly great to the sober mind. The conception 
is so remote from experience that we cannot readily find 
an illustration. The kaleidoscope throws into well-de- 



408 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

fined patterns accidental relations. Yet It simply leads 
the mind to repeat relations really present, and leaves 
successive images with no dependence on each other. 
There is no real analogy within knowledge of what is 
here asserted of it as a whole. If the mind, in knowing, 
creates its own knowledge, the very meaning of knowl- 
edge is lost. 

The feeling, so just in itself, which induced Kant to 
accept some reality in things, should have led him much 
farther. It is not the mere fact of knowledge, but knowl- 
edge in all its details, that requires explanation. For the 
same reason that there must be a common something for 
its occasion, that something must be such as to control all 
its particulars. Our sensuous impressions cover minute 
specifications in which they agree, and this agreement 
demands an equally extended definiteness of constitution 
in the objects which give rise to it. Diverse persons, 
constructing a story addressed to the imagination, arrive 
at very different pictures. They have common material, 
but material not sufficiently elaborated for perfect agree- 
ment. The defining process divides into very distinct 
results. To prevent a like diversity in perceptions, there 
must be, in the objects perceived, exactness of details, 
touching every relation under which they present them- 
selves. Certainly, the one straightforward supposition is 
that details, which reproduce themselves as spatial rela- 
tions, themselves involve such relations. The hypothesis 
that they do not renders the subject less intelligible, and 
so has nothing to commend it. The relation of cause and 
effect is weakened and confused by it. Only the most 
undeniable reasons, found in some deeper bearings of the 
subject, could give color to such a supposition. 

Kant seems to have been led to this belief, partly by 



KANT. 409 

concession to empiricism, and partly in opposition to the 
doctrine which finds statement in Scotch philosophy, a 
direct knowledge of objects. Constructive realism avoids 
both difficulties. It recognizes the sensuous material and 
the constructive energy in perception. The object per- 
ceived is, in its essential qualities, involved in perception, 
while the sensuous impression is referrible to the sense 
alone. The mind grasps the real relations of objects, and 
through them the objects themselves. The action, on 
either side, expresses specific conditions and real corre- 
spondences. The reality of the conditions carries with it 
the correctness of the impressions. Truth lies in this 
agreement of intellectual convictions, under the action of 
causation, with the things which give rise to them. Re- 
semblance is not the primary fact, but identity, under 
diversities, of the cause with the effect. Break this de- 
pendence, and truth, which lies in the correspondence of 
our conceptions with the realities which they cover, is 
lost. The knowing process runs loose, like machinery 
that is doing no work. Secondary differences are made 
to hide radical agreements. Because the mental product 
and the external object are not identical, therefore it is 
inferred they stand on no fixed terms of dependence. 
The two worlds do not rest on each other. The seam- 
less garment of experience is torn in twain, from end to 
end. 

Kant regarded time as the form-element of the inner 
sense, apprehending mental action. This fact calls for no 
additional comment. Consciousness is the distinguishing 
form-element of intellectual phenomena, while time is an 
interpreting idea common to all events, whether physical 
or mental. Great confusion is wrought by the supposi- 
tion that time is not necessary to the very progress of 



4IO THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

thought, but only to our reflective consideration of it. If 
the mind knows its own processes for what they are, then 
these involve time as a necessity of their being, since the 
mind interprets them under this notion. If the mind 
does not know its own activities as they are, but puts 
upon them a presentative or receptive form, to wit, that 
of phenomena which succeed each other, what is the real 
relation of its processes ? To what does knowledge at- 
tach, to these processes as they are, or as they are not ? 
Is our apprehension of our thoughts, like the glinting 
of an oily film on water, wholly untrue to what lies 
beneath it? 

§ lo. The categories of the understanding were elabo- 
rately presented by Kant. They come under four divis- 
ions, each division containing three subdivisions : 

Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. 

Unity. Reality. Substantiality. Possibility. 

Plurality. Negation. Causality. Existence. 

Totality. Limitation. Reciprocity. Necessity. 

What ought a scheme of categories to contain, and 
what ought it to exclude ? A category, in the highest 
application of the word, expresses an ultimate form-ele- 
ment, one w^hich defines the inmost nature of the propo- 
sitions under it, their significance ; but is itself directly 
intelligible to the reason. Thus the proposition, ^' We 
are occupied with the consideration of the understand- 
ing," turns on the notion of time for the meaning of the 
word occupied. A scheme of categories should cover all 
primary ideas, and exclude all derived ones ; and it should 
arrange these ideas, if possible, so as to express the map 
of knowledge whose outlines they establish. As each 
category is in itself simple, nothing can be derived from 



KANT. 41 1 

it ; and yet a category may give occasion to subordinate 
conceptions. Thus we can deduce no definite extension 
from the notion of space, yet space gives room for all the 
constructions of geometry. Space is the simple and pri- 
mary condition of them all. It is sufficient, therefore, in 
a list of categories, to put the notion of space for all the 
axioms which come under it. That most fundamental 
notion, the notion of being, does not fall into distinctions 
according to the objects to which it is applied. A dream, 
a perception, the object perceived, are all real, though the 
permanence, the force, the form of the reality are in each 
case very different. This variety belongs to the distinc- 
tion in things, is learned by experience, and does not 
touch the notion of being. We have no occasion to ex- 
tend our categories to cover the variable phenomena 
which are grouped under them. 

One proposition may involve several categories, and 
the same category may enter into the interpretation of 
very different propositions. The assertion, '' This is the 
same specimen we saw yesterday," involves, manifestly, 
being, time, causation, resemblance. The appearances, 
the circumstances, are such that we explain them under 
the supposition of continuous being. The identity of the 
mineral is involved in the facts interpreted under these 
notions. Identity is not something in addition to them, 
it is the rendering of them. Reality, reality enduring 
through time, assured on the phenomenal side by obser- 
vation, and expounded under the notion of causation, 
constitute together the fact we express by identity. Iden- 
tity is not a distinct category, therefore, but a word of 
interpretation of a complex experience arising under sev- 
eral categories. 

With this view of the nature of categories, the list 



412 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

offered by Kant seems both deficient and redundant. It 
fails to include all primitive ideas ; it includes those which 
are not primitive. The form-elements, space and time, 
assigned to the sense, are really form-elements of the 
understanding. The sense, aside from the judgment, has 
no form-elements. The mind has no occasion for such 
an element as a constructive feature, till it advances to a 
judgment. It is judgments alone that necessarily involve 
prior ideas. The sensation can remain unrendered in 
terms of knowledge. When we perceive, when we unite 
judgment to sensation, the forms, positions, distances we 
recognize are products of the understanding. The same 
is true of our inner experience, as involving time. Space 
and time are no more parts of our sensuous experience 
than are being, resemblance, causation. All arise on 
occasion of a sensuous experience which appeals to the 
understanding to be rendered in terms of thought. 

The first division of categories, unity, plurality, totality, 
is said to arise under number. ''The scheme of quantity 
is number." If this is true, we have in them but one 
category, that of number. Unity, plurality, totality are 
but a grouping of the ways in which objects may be con- 
sidered under the relation of number. But unity is not 
equivalent to one. One no more stands for unity than 
two stands for opposition, or four for involution. The 
identification of one and unity is but a loose play of 
images. Unity, as a notion, is a result of experience, an 
apprehension of things or acts that stand in close intellec- 
tual dependence on each other. We may well accept 
number as a primitive form-element, but it does not touch 
those constructive dependencies which we express by 
unity. Unity is a growing insight into the relations of 
actions, established in experience by the mind's knowl- 



KANT. 413 

edge of its own activity and the activities of the world. 
It learns to seek unity, a definite combination of effort, 
and also to discern it where it exists. The reason fur- 
nishes regulative ideas simply as empty possibilities. The 
content which may, at any time, be included in them, be- 
longs wholly to experience. The reason enables us to 
grasp sensuous terms in supersensuous relations. Unity 
is in every case a definite, intelligible fact, which remains 
to be apprehended for exactly what it is. It is not a 
prior idea brought to experience, it is an intellectual 
relation found in it and learned from it. 

The three specifications, the single, the plural, the total, 
so far as they pertain to numerical distinctions, resolve 
themselves into one category, that of number. The tri- 
chotomous division was held by Kant to involve, in each 
case, a definite dependence. The first term expresses a 
general condition ; the second, examples under it ; and 
the third, the unity of the two. Thus totality is plurality 
expounded by unity, taken in their entire extension. 
Limitation is reality and negation combined in one form 
of being. Reciprocity is the reaction of causes as con- 
tained in substances. Necessity is the possible become 
actual. Most plainly the unity, plurality, totality of Kant 
are not simply numerical expressions ; they are not the 
grammarian's singular, dual, anci plural. These last do 
not exhaust, they only group, relations ; they cover a 
naked numerical fact. Totality, as conceived by Kant, 
is the highest expression of unity. These categories are 
the relatively barren notion of number, inflated by a 
vital, intellectual experience, and placed for its highest 
result. 

The second division Kant refers to being in time. The 
only new category it contains is that of being. The three 



414 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

modes of assertion, affirming, denying, or limiting the 
reality, involve simply a convenient logical classification 
of judgments. Judgments of limitation, like judgments 
of plurality, cover an inexhaustible and very variable 
class. 

The third triplet, substantiality, causality, reciprocity, 
involves the category of causation. In their distinctions 
these terms are an expression of our apprehension of the 
facts of the world under this notion. We infer substance 
from continuous phenomena, and reciprocal action from 
changeable phenomena. Kant, under the influence of 
empiricism, identifies causation with sequence. The third 
and fourth triplets are construed under causation as a 
particular expression of a time relation. The productive 
idea in the triplets is causality. Substantiality and reci- 
procity are our rendering of experience under the one 
notion of cause and effect. 

The fourth triplet is possibility, existence (actuality), 
necessity. There may be a double application of these 
conceptions, either in connection with physical events 
or with intellectual activity. Possibility, in reference to 
events, may express our ignorance of the causes at work 
in a given case, and hence our ignorance of the events 
which may follow them. Actuality is a determination, in 
the evolution of causes, of what is contained in them. 
Necessity then follows as the completion of the relation. 
In connection with intellectual activity, possibility may 
express our ignorance concerning the truth of a proposi- 
tion, actuality our assertion of its truth, necessity the 
conclusions which follow from its truth. If this triplet 
gains its significance, not from the inner relation of things, 
but only from our inability at once to grasp that relation, 
then most assuredly it is, throughout, an interpretation 



KANT. 415 

of experience, and contains no addition to our stock of 
categories. It ought, however, to receive another render- 
ing wholly, as covering the relations of intellectual activi- 
ties under the notion of spontaneity. Spontaneity yields 
a real possibility. This, once determined by action, lapses 
under physical connections into necessity. The signifi- 
cance of possibility and necessity is referrible, respect- 
ively, to spontaneity and causation. 

Such were the intellectual modes which Kant presented 
for the government of our intellectual processes. It is a 
mixed product of secondary and primary, empirical and 
rational, forms. The categories ought not to be united 
with simply logical divisions of judgments, laid down for 
the ease and clearness of proof. True categories involve 
another consideration wholly, the presence of a primitive 
idea. A judgment, as positive or negative, as particular 
or universal, affects the validity of the conclusions drawn 
from it, but has nothing to do with interpreting ideas. 
We may affirm and deny under the same form-elements. 
Affirmation and denial are mere accidents of exoression, 
as compared with the force of true categories. 

It is impossible, therefore, to mingle successfully cate- 
gories and logical distinctions. The two have reference 
to totally distinct things ; the one, to the primitive terms 
of reason under which judgments arise; the other, to the 
safety of the processes by which they are interlocked 
with each other in argument. By this union, neither of 
the two purposes is clearly before us. This method 
leads to the far more important error of omission. There 
is not included in these categories a single one which per- 
tains to spiritual phenomena. The notions which order 
this branch of our experience are wanting. Consciousness, 
spontaneity, truth, beauty, right, find no admission. It 



4l6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

is inevitable, therefore, that the beliefs which are inter- 
preted by these form-elements should sink back into con- 
fusion and darkness, should be regarded as transcendental, 
since they are transcendental to the forms of thought 
which Kant has provided. The very presence of such 
ideas in the human mind as freedom, virtue, God, becomes 
a strange anomaly. These conceptions not only force 
their way in through the barriers of experience, they 
profoundly affect action. Yet Kant has no processes of 
thought which can expound them. The transcendental, 
in the philosophy of Kant, involves the same dif^culty 
as the Unknown, in the philosophy of Spencer. The 
Unknown is known in the very naming it, is known by 
virtue of all the purposes of thought which it subserves, 
is known to the very limit of its rational recognition. It 
clings to us, in spite of every expulsive process, as the 
firmest constituent of reason. So is it with the tran- 
scendental. It does not transcend knowledge ; it only 
transcends the explanatory methods of a given philoso- 
phy, and so condemns that philosophy. What should 
we think of a scientific hypothesis that disposed of the 
most difficult facts, waiting explanation, by pronouncing 
them transcendental ? Transcendentalism is the negation 
of philosophy. 

§ II. This difficulty, this want of one concurrent sys- 
tem, is grea.tly enhanced by the *' Critique of the Practical 
Reason." Here a variety of fundamental convictions 
finds admittance, which are not provided for in the critical 
outfit of the mind. Philosophy thus affirms its own in- 
adequacy, and then relapses into dogmatism. Kant as a 
dogmatist, is far superior to Kant as a philosopher. On 
the ground of possibilities which escape our knowledge, 
because we apprehend things in a peculiar way, and not 



KANT. 417 

necessarily as they are, he accepts conclusions over a large 
range of thought for which no provision is made in cur- 
rent forms of inquiry. As form-elements are subjective, 
phenomena and noumena no longer contain each other. 
The noumena which give occasion to spatial, physical 
phenomena are not determined to any form of being by 
this fact. They still fly at large, to be used conjecturally 
as we please in cosmic construction. Our experiences 
give us no fixed terms in the world of realities, and our 
philosophy is wholly free in its hypotheses, with the result 
that no hypothesis carries with it any proof. Our expe- 
rience offers itself in a dual form, but forms do not declare 
realities. When we deal with realities, monads, we have 
no restraint put upon us by phenomenal relations, and so 
our constructions are wholly fanciful and perfectly worth- 
less. 

A transcendental philosophy, in divorcing itself from 
experience, cuts itself loose from all the limits of inquiry 
and the tests of truth. Yet it must proceed under im- 
ages derived, in a remote way, from these very fields of 
familiar thought. Such a philosophy becomes most ser- 
viceable when, as with Kant, it settles down into the 
affirmation of spiritual convictions as undeniable, irrefu- 
table facts. This is to save the phenomena with which 
we start, in spite of the philosophy with which we close. 
It is to reaffirm the facts in the face of an inadequate 
theory concerning them. The philosophic instinct of 
Kant is at its highest and best when he confronts his own 
critical work, and rescues the spiritual world from it. 

Having asserted another set of facts in experience, we 

are prepared for a new philosophy of experience. We are 

ready to extend our hypothesis till it encloses all the 

phenomena, to make our critique of the pure reason 

27 



41 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

cover the practical reason. As a condition of saving phi- 
losophy, of imparting to it any significance or value, we 
shall be compelled to recognize knowledge as knowledge, 
and to carry the knowing process, as a clear, self-consist- 
ent, coherent act, through the whole range of thought. 
No part of this field, remote as it may be, and diverse as 
it may be, can, in reference to any other portion, be tran- 
scendental. If we are to have a path, we must accept the 
foundations on which it rests. Truth must be one univer- 
sal, harmonious product. The least flaw mars the entire 
crystal. Conjectures that are not in extension of truths and 
the realities which contain them are the shreds of clouds. 

The practical reason, with Kant, gathers its conclusions 
close about the moral law, and so breaks ground in the 
spiritual world. All the motives of experience can be 
reduced to a pursuit of personal pleasure. But there is 
in us a moral consciousness which affirms, in the presence 
of these lower incentives, a universal law, rising above 
experience for its government. Kant gave this law a 
threefold expression. Act according to those principles 
which are fitted to be universal laws ; Regard humanity 
in thyself, in others, as an end, never as a means ; Regard 
the law of action as the general expression of the will of 
all rational beings. The power of the mind to apprehend 
a law that rises, in a universal form, above all experience, 
shows its superiority to experience ; that, as noumenon, it 
gives a law to itself. Strong and admirable as are these 
assertions of Kant, how much more complete and coher- 
ent do they become when the facts on which they rest 
are recognized as integral parts, with sensuous sensibilities, 
in one complex experience, constructed under fitting 
form-elements that define the entire life. 

This ethical law, from which there is no appeal to 



KANT. 419 

experience, demands, in its fulfilment as a categorical im- 
perative, three postulates : freedom, immortality, and the 
being of God. Without freedom, the law is inapplicable ; 
and with the law the will is set free in obedience from the 
government of the desires. Freedom remains, however, 
inapprehensible, though we see that it is involved in this 
assertion by the moral consciousness of a supreme law. 
If this law is applicable to the spirit, it must be by virtue 
of the liberty which belongs to the spirit-in-itself. The 
very presence of the law shows that the spirit is lifted 
above the government of phenomena, and the empirical 
principles which prevail in them. 

The second postulate is that of immortality. This 
moral law is incapable of fulfilment within the narrow 
period of life. We must, therefore, assume a period suffi- 
cient to give the law its necessary conditions of action. 
This must be conceded, if the law is to have its full force 
as law. 

The third postulate is that of the existence of God. 
Happiness and virtue are -not now coincident. They do 
not run parallel with each other. We are bound under 
a supreme law to the pursuit of virtue. This involves a 
greater or less loss of happiness. Virtue is not inde- 
pendent of happiness. It is not so supreme a state as 
either to be indifferent to happiness, or to command it. 
Natural law and ethical law ought to concur in conferring 
happiness on virtue, in making virtue complete in happi- 
ness. Virtue, as a supreme law and a supreme good, 
postulates this ultimate harmony. There must, therefore, 
be a supreme reconciling power between these two terms, 
now colliding with each other. There must be a loving 
intelligence bringing them together in perfect justification 
of an absolute law. 



420 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

The acceptance of these postulates Kant regards as a 
necessary antecedent to an apprehension of the relations 
of the moral law. They transcend the pure reason, and 
cannot be proved by it, neither can they be disproved. 
They are possibilities enclosed in the noumena. As the 
noumenon, spirit, declares itself in an unempirical, a tran- 
scendental, law, in accepting that law we also accept its 
implications. 

The footing of Kant in the Practical Reason is that of 
the moral law. This he magnifies with the strongest asser- 
tion. It is perfect and inviolable. '' Two things fill the 
mind with increasing awe the oftener and the longer we 
reflect upon them, the starry heavens above and the moral 
law within." Kant thus wins back, by stanch assertion, in 
the Practical Reason what he had so needlessly lost in the 
Pure Reason. These truths, however, suffer the dispar- 
agement of being transcendental, of standing in no recog- 
nized and harmonious relation with the mass of our convic- 
tions. If we choose to take the '^ Critique of the Practical 
Reason " at its full value, and restrict thereby the " Cri- 
tique of the Pure Reason," we shall find ourselves far up on 
the table-land of rational insight. Experience and faith, 
the sensuous life and the spiritual life, are more than ever 
divided from each other by this philosophy. In the one, 
we pursue a firm, plain path among things, but have no 
outlook above or beyond them. The mists everywhere 
lie low on the horizon. In the other we rise above the 
clouds, we see them beneath us, we breathe the pure air of 
immense, open spaces, but we cannot connect this vision 
with what lies beneath it. We conjecture that there is 
a correspondence. This correspondence becomes with us 
a hypothesis, but we cannot establish it, much less see it. 

One is astonished at these results, so weak, so strong; 



KANT. 421 

SO irreconcilable, so undeniable ; astonished that a mind, 
having lost so much, regains so much by a sudden output 
of spiritual strength. Yet one must feel that, in spite of 
this recovery, there is here no sufificient philosophy ; that 
our experience cannot be so divided into incommunicable 
halves. When we find the clews of truth, they run ob- 
scurely, it may be, but continuously and firmly, through 
all phenomena, knitting them together as one integer. 
The upper air and the air beneath are but the same 
atmosphere, in which all elements are seeking diffusion. 

Kant closely identifies religious duty with moral obli- 
gation. As the moral law is the basis of our faith in God, 
so is it of our duties to God. The divine is expressed in 
the law which gives us our only secure footing in this 
transcendental region. In harmony with the wide chasm 
thus recognized between experience and insight, life and 
faith, Kant accepts an evil principle, in immediate con- 
flict with the good principle. Virtue thus becomes not so 
much the subduing of all the powers of mind and body 
under one law, for their true harmony and strength, as the 
victory of one portion of a nature, not in keeping with 
itself, over another portion. That discrepancy of faculties 
which has found entrance in psychology reappears, in a 
still stronger form, in the moral world. Yet where does 
the moral law lie, what is its field of operation? Its lines 
of order and construction seem to rest on this very sen- 
suous, social experience which is opposed to it. The 
office of the moral law is to convert this very experience 
into a gracious spiritual life. The bodily expression of 
spiritual being must be of this external order. 

The practical reason — practical as directing action — 
turns for its validity on ethical law, and hence on the 
character and source of that notion. The ethical law is 



422 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

the a priori element in the practical reason, giving form to 
its conclusions. The principle that each man is so to act 
that the law of his action may be universal, has the force 
of an axiom. It is another rendering of the principle, Do 
unto others as ye would that they should do unto you. 
The only proof these principles require is a clear presenta- 
tion. There is in them a primitive idea, not present in 
any other class of propositions. To this idea they owe 
their force as ethical precepts. The sense of right, of 
obligation, is something other than simple truth, and 
separates the precepts of morals from all other forms of 
law. In this lies the secret of a categorical imperative. 
If Kant asserts this imperative simply on the authority of 
the mind itself, he is treating the facts of the practical 
reason in a way very distinct from his method in pure 
reason, and one much wiser. If he were to follow that 
method, he would be compelled to say that this governing 
notion of right is subjective, a condition put by the mind 
on the facts before it, and one which expresses nothing, 
with any certainty, in the real relation of things. But if 
this is true, then the postulates lose hold of facts ; as the 
law on which they depend weakens into a personal im- 
pression. We are still in the same subjective region that 
made all our reasoning in the pure reason simply formal. 
We have gained no new footing. If, on the other hand, 
Kant persists in the assertion that we have, in moral pre- 
cepts, ultimate and adequate laws of belief and action, 
then he should carry back a similar affirmation to the con- 
victions of the pure reason. He should accept the author- 
ity of those ideas and judgments under which we assert 
reality and the relations of space and time. He should 
rectify and enlarge these first processes till they too are 
valid. The power to reach once the transcendental, and 



KANT. 423 

reason safely concerning it, settles the scope of the mind. 
All farther theory is merely the wise harmonizing of part 
with part, power with power. 

The boldness of Kant in the Practical Reason and his 
timidity in the Pure Reason are wholly inconsistent with 
each other. The two legs of his system are unequal. If 
one holds stanchly by the one Critique, he is sure greatly 
to limit the other. The gist of the entire method is not 
to let one's right hand know what his left hand doeth. 

§ 12. Kant's '' Critique of the Faculty of Judgment" 
affords another example of a drawn battle between the 
empirical and the rational tendency. Kant points out the 
fact that our explanations of the external world assume 
unity of construction, and are satisfactory only as they 
arise under an a priori conception of harmonious, con- 
structive relations which the mind itself has put upon 
the phenomena under its consideration. All hypotheses 
which go before induction are framed under this notion of 
unity. The extension we at once give to a law which has 
been established by a very limited number of examples 
Implies an overshadowing sense of construction in the 
world akin to that of our own intelligence. We seek re- 
sults under this clew of perfect dependence ; we expand 
them immediately to the full extension of this idea. An 
a priori idea is thus constantly present in induction. To 
its successful application all science is to be ascribed. It 
is by virtue of the concurrence of nature with our concep- 
tions of order — conceptions so much broader than any 
possible sensuous knowledge — that nature meets in us 
the demands of freedom of thought and becomes a fitting 
intellectual workshop. So true is this relation of thought 
to inquiry, that Kant should have felt constrained to 
carry it much farther, or to have stopped much sooner. 



424 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

The fact that nature responds through so wide a range to 
the mind of man should either satisfy us that this cohe- 
rence is the inner force of realities, the constructive inter- 
dependence of the internal and the external, or is due to 
the entire absence of external realities, the union of con- 
ception with conception as homogeneous, subjective prod- 
ucts. We have, in this pervasive harmony of results, the 
essential condition of a universe ; either a universe made 
up of two equally valid terms in constant and concurrent 
reaction, or a universe of coherent images. 

One of the ways in which, in conformity to the methods 
of our own intelligence, we must look upon the physical 
world, is that of final ends. We cannot attain the full 
sense of unity without it. Especially is this true of all 
living things- The organized being seems to us to pos- 
sess in itself formative power, working toward its own well- 
being. We put the same notion, the same thought-form 
of the understanding on the world as a whole, especially 
in its relations to man and to life. What bearing, then, 
has this teleological determination of thought on its 
simply causal or mechanical explanations ? How can a 
movement which is impelled from behind be drawn for- 
ward in front ? 

Kant again rests on double and irreconcilable grounds. 
We cannot assert, he thinks, that all things are explicable 
by mechanical laws, efficient causes ; nor that the produc- 
tion of all material dependencies is not possible to merely 
mechanical forces. The two regulative principles of 
thought must be allowed to act side by side. Natural 
things and their forms must be regarded as the possible 
products of mechanical laws. Certain relations of the 
material require, in their apprehension, another law than 
that of causality, that of a final end. The connection 



KANT. 425 

between the two transcends our powers. The whole may- 
involve in it and draw with it the parts. We can only con- 
ceive the parts as constituting the whole. Here, as else- 
where, there are weakness and conflict in the philosophy 
of Kant, arising from the fact that he is willing to yield 
neither to the empirical nor to the intuitional method, 
and has not fully wrought out the relation between them. 
He was strong in his assertions and in his masterly efforts 
to justify them. The reconciliation of the two sets of 
facts, to each of which he so tenaciously clings, is to be 
found in shifting form-elements from subjective limita- 
tions to the essential and eternal laws of reason itself ; 
and, then, in so extending their number as to include in 
one whole those of spiritual as well as those of physical 
phenomena. The harmony of the two, in action and in 
conception, is a growing product of a rational experience. 
In the case before us, the whole draws with it the parts 
by virtue of the forecast of Infinite Reason. The parts 
unite in and secure the whole, by virtue of the causes and 
reasons under which they are conjointly wrought out. 
Causes and reasons interpenetrate each other, neither ex- 
cludes the other, nor the phenomena therein involved. 

It is quite true that, in making this assertion, we pro- 
ject on the world about us and above us our own methods, 
but these methods are those of knowing. Their essential 
justness is the postulate on which alone any knowledge, 
any philosophy, is possible ; a postulate, therefore, estab- 
lished by all the accumulations of truth and involved in 
the validity of every step of inquiry. We ought to alter 
the above image. We are not projecting forms on a 
world alien to them ; we are finding forms in a world 
subject to them ; receiving them and their contents in 
a pure, perceptive act. Reason, finite and infinite, is 



426 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

everywhere one, and shares its methods in common. We 
have paid no attention to the manner in which these dis- 
crepancies of Kant are softened. They are in the funda- 
mental positions of the philosophy, and its influence has 
turned, in a large measure, upon them. These are the 
facts in which we are chiefly interested. 

§ 1 3. Kant was a great philosopher by virtue of the com- 
prehensiveness of his system, not by virtue of its suffi- 
ciency within itself. All have found something in it which 
they could heartily accept. The cry, ** Back to Kant," after 
all the vague wanderings of idealism, has had this reason 
in it : that at this intersection of so many lines of thought 
more profitable directions of inquiry could be found than 
those paths actually pursued by the leaders of philosophy. 
Kant felt many influences, and felt them strongly, and so, 
in turn, gave occasion to conflicting forms of speculation. 
The empiricist finds in his assertion of the transcendental 
character of all spiritual truth, and of the wholly relative 
character of knowledge, his first principles. Neither need 
the modern empirical philosophy object to the a priori 
forms of judgments. These are much the same as those 
instant and instinctive outlines of truth which it itself 
provides for as the inherited outlines of knowledge. 
Here are numerous and strong reasons why an empiricist 
should honor Kant. The idealist finds in Kant an equally 
fair start and favorable send-ofT. Drop the unphilosophi- 
cal and disappointing assertions about things-in-them- 
selves, accept fully the subjective character of all form- 
elements, allow these to carry with them the subjective 
nature of realities, and firm ground is won for idealism. 
Indeed, this is the most immediate and consistent issue 
of the philosophy of Kant. 

The intuitionalist, the realist, can, in turn, look for aid 



IDEALISM. 427 

to the " Critique of the Practical Reason." Passing lightly 
the conflicting theories with which these assertions are 
associated, he sees in the categorical imperative, and in 
the postulates which it involves, the essential terms for a 
spiritual rendering of the world. 

No other man in modern philosophy has exerted an in- 
fluence equal to that of Kant, and chiefly because of this 
comprehensiveness. Eager as we are in the search of unity, 
a unity which is attained by narrowing down the problem 
and omitting leading factors can gain no permanent ac- 
ceptance. It is of more moment to keep the problem in 
its entirety before us, than it is to bring to it a solution 
that suffers the taint of inadequacy. Philosophy and 
religion need constantly to be reminded of the breadth 
and variety of the facts they have under consideration. 
Our conceptions must have elasticity, or they will perish 
in their very birth. Kant owes his greatness to the fact 
that so many lines meet in him, 

PART II. 

IDEALISM IN GERMANY. 

§ 14. Nowhere else has idealism played anything like 
so important a part in philosophy as in Germany. The 
Germans, obedient to the impulse given in this direction 
by Kant, have exhausted the possibilities of this form of 
speculation and tinctured all their thinking with idealistic 
quality. Even their empiricism is not free from it. 
Idealism was carried rapidly forward to its most complete 
and elaborate expression by three brilliant thinkers, work- 
ing one vein of thought in close dependence on each 
other. Fichte gave impulse to Schelling, and Schelling 



428 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

to Hegel, while Hegel left the theory in so rarefied and 
recondite a form that it has come to a halt by virtue of 
its own tenuity and remoteness from human knowledge. 
Each of the three held, for a time, a professorship at 
Jena. By a movement extending through a series of 
years, they passed over a space which could hardly have 
been traversed by any one man. The philosophy of each 
is not so much a position, as a section, in a movement 
which was completed in the later conclusions of Hegel. 
No phase of philosophy has involved more subtilty, 
vigor, and continuity of thought than German idealism, 
yet none has added more to that reproach which has 
overtaken metaphysics as a net-work of speculations, 
which, if they are not altogether unintelligible, are desti- 
tute of any practical worth, without verification and alien 
to all knowledge. 

The results of idealism, summed up as a philosophy, 
turn so entirely on the adequacy of its premises and the 
correctness of its methods, that we need not go beyond 
these preliminary steps in assigning its position in the 
development of thought. Idealism may lead to specific 
truths of much value by virtue of its astute and coherent 
processes, but its worth as a philosophy is invalidated at 
once by an assumption which sets at naught the larger 
share of experience. In any branch of inquiry, like aes- 
thetics, in which interpretation and insight abound, ideal- 
ism may yieM admirable results, but these go but a little 
way in justifying it as a philosophy. One may follow, or 
may excuse himself from following, the obscure and per- 
plexed path by which idealism reaches its more remote 
conclusions. He may be sure, in either case, that he ap- 
prehends, with reasonable correctness, the position it 
occupies as a speculation. Yet a system which involves 



NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 429 

SO generous a gymnastic cannot be destitute of valuable 
results. 

It is a fact not a little surprising that philosophy should 
ever wander in a continuous line so far away from the 
haunts of mind, and from conclusions capable of incor- 
porating themselves, in a familiar way, with human ex- 
perience — that experience in which the sensuous and the 
intellectual constantly illuminate each other. It seems 
to arise from an antecedent conviction that philosophy is 
not simply an exploration of the limits of knowledge, but 
the conversion of knowledge, through its whole extent, 
into some deeper and more ultimate insight. Ordinary 
apprehension is regarded as, in some way, superficial and 
defective, and an effort is made, with no inquiry into its 
reasonableness, to deepen and transform knowledge within 
itself into what is termed philosophy. This philosophy 
consists in the mind's taking from itself the ordinary con- 
ditions and postulates of truth, and then restoring them 
with a more certain and inward apprehension of their very 
nature. The mind herein deludes itself. All knowledge 
has its postulates, and these postulates are a portion of 
its primitive and rational equipment. The mind must 
consent to begin ; and wastes its effort in trying to go 
back of the beginning. 

A kindred disposition is shown when we insist on what 
we term a scientific method as applicable to every branch 
of inquiry. Complex things must be known according to 
their own nature and their own complexity, and not as 
more mechanical or more simple relations are apprehended. 
The subject of inquiry defines the method of investiga- 
tion. Knowledge lies not in reducing distinct relations 
to one standard, but in accepting them in their diversity. 
The method, call it scientific or what we please, which 



430 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

belongs to an investigation of physical facts, is not appli- 
cable to an inquiry into mental phenomena. If we limit 
science in its definition, and then strive to carry it be- 
yond the restricted field which this definition implies, 
we produce nothing but confusion. 

So is it also in philosophy. Philosophy is not a new, 
another, a deeper, form of knowing; it is simply a clear 
and consecutive observation of the familiar terms of 
thought as they lie in experience, and the acceptance of 
them for what they are. The profundity of philosophy 
does not consist in finding something deeper than the 
deepest in experience, but in seeing that the deepest is a 
necessary and adequate foundation of truth. The light 
of reason is kindled, not outside the field of knowledge, 
but inside of it. The mind passes into strength and in- 
sight in the fulfilment of its own familiar processes. 

In mathematics we deal with pure form-elements ; we 
are able, therefore, to give a demonstrative force to our 
conclusions which cannot belong to our apprehension of 
any concrete facts whatever. Philosophy, it is felt, should 
find similar form-elements, enclosing all truth, and thus 
impart an absolute character to knowledge. But philoso- 
phy is not an inquiry into abstract relations merely, but 
is also an extended exploration of concrete facts. Its 
purpose is to see the reconciliation, in our familiar con- 
victions, of all terms of thought, be they sensuous or 
rational. Its very object is to protect us against a narrow 
empiricism, on the one side, and a barren exploitation of 
empty form-elements, on the other. Philosophy is suc- 
cessful only when it contents itself in accepting and defin- 
ing all the processes of knowledge which come under its 
observation. If it allows itself to wander far afield, mis- 
led by some false notion of the possible and the desirable, 



NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 43 1 

it ceases to be philosophy and becomes speculation, the 
use of powers when the profitable clews which guide them 
are gone, the motion of a machine when the material of 
manufacture is no longer present. 

When idealism came to give no value, or gave a facti- 
tious one, to half human experience, it became a foregone 
conclusion, that, lacking the guidance and correction of 
adequate premises, its results would be remote and illu- 
sory. The logical process cannot proceed profitably in 
pure thought w^hen robbed of the material which fastens 
it, fills it, and gives to its results the continuity, certainty, 
and firmness of a closely woven fabric. 

The disposition of idealism to frame a technical vocab- 
ulary helps it onward in its erratic and visionary develop- 
ment. When science has occasion to deal with distinctions 
which have not been made, or not been completely made, 
in ordinary speech, it, of necessity, frames a terminol- 
ogy suited to its purposes. The precision and safety of 
thought are promoted by its more adequate instrument 
of expression. The Avords employed remain explicit and 
firm in meaning, and identical in use, because there are 
perfectly definite facts back of them. This method in 
science seems to promise success to a like effort in phi- 
losophy. But the purpose of philosophy is not so much 
to explore a new territory as it is to define an old one. 
The powers and processes it has to expound are the 
familiar ones of psychology ; the facts it has to set in 
order are those which arise in our daily experience, and 
have been embodying themselves in language from the 
very beginning. The phenomena to be discussed are not 
new phenomena, waiting to be disclosed, and when dis- 
closed capable of exact definition ; they are those variable 
facts whose most permanent and exact expression is 



432 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

found in history and current speech. It is this speech 
which best measures them. If, in philosophy, a techni- 
cal vocabulary is introduced, it aids the mind in separat- 
ing itself from the forms of knowledge which await its 
exposition. The discussions which arise in it are less 
readily and constantly referrible, for correction and illus- 
tration, to familiar facts. The ideas contained in the 
novel phraseology become more and more remote from 
the ordinary activities of thought — the activities which 
are the only subject-matter of inquiry. The errors of the 
system hide themselves in its vocabulary, and are extended 
by means of it ; and a coherence of words is more and 
more mistaken for the correspondences of truth. A re- 
flection of intellectual relations is found in our ingenious 
travesty of them. The philosophy roots itself in the 
words, and the words nourish the philosophy. They 
become the means of a coherent and tripping move- 
ment, on the part of those familiar with them, by which 
they delude themselves and illude others. Remote re- 
gions are made habitable to thought by novel expressions, 
which become at length their indigenous population. Phi- 
losophy sinks into a barren propagation of conceptions 
all its own, and which return with difficulty into the one 
familiar path of truth for different minds. Philosophy 
that concerns the common terms of all knowledge ought 
to be able to express its thoughts concerning them in a 
familiar way". 

§ 15. Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797) was the first 
of the German idealists. His opinions grew directly out 
of those of Kant. Previous to coming under the influence 
of Kant he had adhered to the view of Spinoza, in which 
extension and thought are regarded as attributes of one 
substance. The strong distinction which Kant drew be- 



I 



FICHTE. 433 

tween physical phenomena, as subject to causation, and 
the personal ego, as subject to moral law, drew his eager 
attention. Herein lay the possibility of a more absolute 
union of physical and mental facts than that expressed 
by the doctrine of Spinoza. It Avas a union, moreover, 
which exalted the personal element. This fact made it 
more acceptable to Fichte, with whom moral forces played 
a supreme part. It was an accepted aphorism with him, 
" The philosophy one chooses depends on the man he is." 
Fichte was very ready to escape from the fixed evolution 
of Spinoza into the liberty of the personal noumenon 
included in the behef of Kant. 

Nor in doing this did he lose the unity of the system 
of Spinoza. The subjective form of perception involves 
the entire subjective character of mental phenomena. If 
the reference w^e make of external objects to the external 
world is, in all its concomitants, illusory ; if physical phe- 
nomena do not prove w4iat they seem to prove, objects 
measurably like themselves, why should Ave go beyond 
the mind for their occasion ? Certainly, the first and ob- 
vious and inevitable assertion failing, there remains very 
little to support a reference of physical phenomena to 
some transcendental noumena. Let these noumena drop 
away, absorb all phenomena in the personal noumenon, 
and Ave attain both unity and liberty. The moral side of 
Kant's philosophy is saved, and the physical side is in- 
cluded in it. The mind itself gives to itself its apparent 
limitations in sensuous experience, and perception lies as 
completely within consciousness as pure thought. 

There is, indeed, one most immediate and grave objec- 
tion to this vicAv, but one A\^hich Kant had encountered 
and greatly reduced to his own mind and the minds of 
others. The objection is this : Ave do not and cannot 
28 



434 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

interpret our daily experience in this subjective fashion. 
Our convictions arise universally and irrepressibly under 
a dual form. Sensuous phenomena indicate to us a double 
activity, and we can no more dispense with external ob- 
jects than with our own activity in their explanation. 
Nothing is more deeply rooted in the spontaneous action 
of mind than this inner and outer reference of our experi- 
ence. To set aside a conclusion of this order is to allow 
philosophy to overbear the facts given it to expound ; is 
to place the hypothesis beyond the reach of the phenom- 
ena it is brought forward to explain. The common mind 
thus conceives so instant and instinctive a repulsion to 
idealism as to preclude its growth. The bulk of our 
knowledge involves the reality of things, and arises from 
searching them out as we find them to be. No man 
understands a quartz crystal, a rose, a robin as something 
*^ posited " by himself. The assertion seems ridiculous 
to him. All their specific qualities give flat contradiction 
to it. His own creations in imagination are of another 
order, quite. The methods of acquiring knowledge im- 
part no color to idealism. 

Urgent and insuperable as this difficulty seems, Kant 
had greatly weakened its force by affirming the subjective 
character of all form-elements. This assertion cut off the 
connection, the interpreting relation, between phenomena 
and things-in-themselves. If phenomena in no way define 
noumena, how can noumena determine phenomena? The 
causal relation, having lost its qualitative force, can hardly 
serve any definite purpose whatever. Failing in the one 
direction to determine the sensuous nature of the im- 
pression, it may well enough fail in the other direction 
to determine the reality of the object. If the cause does 
not guarantee the effect, the effect cannot guarantee the 



FICHTE. 435 

cause. Kant, indeed, held fast to an external reality as 
the ground of our common, sensuous experience ; but 
this reality became a loose, factitious element, because it 
stood in no connection with the phenomena referred to 
it. Primary and secondary qualities alike were wholly 
mental experiences, and left the noumena airy nothings, 
afloat in the world of conjecture. Fichte thus not only 
found much of the labor in preparation for idealism per- 
formed, but that the coherence of logical method de- 
manded its completion. He proceeded at once to fully 
open the door which stood ajar, and so we have, in Ger- 
man philosophy, that wonderful exposition of the possi- 
bilities of idealism. Yet, from the outset, we feel that 
the conditions of sound and suf^cient knowledge are 
wanting, and that all achievement will be of the nature 
of a feat confined to a single person, and which cannot 
perpetuate itself. No subtilty within the system can 
cure the inadequacy of its premises. The motive that 
led Kant to retain noumena, the need of common ground 
for a conjoint movement of diverse minds, remained a 
controlling consideration in shaping the successive phases 
of idealism. Idealism recognized, more and more, one 
absolute, comprehensive movement. 

The individual ceases to be the measure of things, and 
is taken up, as a single beam of light, into the ocean 
of light that fills the spiritual concave. The waves that 
break on this particular beach are only one expression of 
the universal tide. The relation of the particular and 
the general is, indeed, obscure, but is not suffered, as an 
empirical difficulty, to stand across the path of wide- 
sweeping and universal thought. The personal, in intel- 
lectual movement, is constantly subordinated to the im- 
personal. The latter gives rise to the former, rather 



43^ THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

than the former to the latter. This is the result of an 
oversight of consciousness as the exclusive form-element 
of intellectual phenomena, 

§ i6. When philosophy is supposed to consist in the 
discovery of primitive truths or principles, which can be 
traced through all the growth of knowledge, it necessarily 
lays great stress on monism. Monism is closely con- 
nected with any scheme of philosophy which undertakes 
to bring the guiding light of a few distinct ideas to every 
process of thought ; as single axioms interlace all mathe- 
matical proof. 

Fichte started with Kant in the unity and liberty which 
belong to mind in its higher, transcendental action. It 
sees, seeks, and feels a concurrence of relations, which is 
the ground and motive of all thought. The steps by 
which this unity of consciousness is developed are three. 
The ego first posits itself. Consciousness carries with it 
the identity of the ego as disclosed in its own states. The 
ego then posits, in distinction from itself, the non-ego. 
The sensuous material of this non-ego is given by the 
mind itself. The mind posits its own products as a non- 
ego. The mind thus opposes these changeable, divisible 
impressions to its own unchangeable, indivisible being. 
The ego, whose being is involved in and limited by its 
own experiences, is each man's personality. The ego first 
reached in. simple consciousness is, as yet, impersonal. 
Its personality is expressed in that completed experience 
in which it finds itself at work under conditions assigned 
by the non-ego. The ultimate idea towards which per- 
sonality is moving is reason, reconciled in both its terms, 
subjective and objective, in its inner law and actual expe- 
rience under that law. Fichte thus takes the complex 
experience of man, assumes it as in the highest sense all 



A 



FICHTE. 437 

his own, and then proceeds to treat it under its various 
relations. The subjective and objective remain, though 
greatly softened down in force. In the earlier philoso- 
phy of Fichte, the law of development is from a rela- 
tive and personal form to a more absolute and imper- 
sonal one. In this scheme he found no place for God, 
save as the universal moral force involved in the entire 
movement. The vigor of his moral conviction found 
expression in a comprehensive growth under a uni- 
versal law that thoroughly harmonizes the ego with 
itself. 

Later, Fichte moved forward toward the position taken 
by Schelling. The need of a wider unity was felt than 
can accompany personal development. The Absolute be- 
came the primary idea. God alone is truly existent. The 
threefold expression takes place in him, and the develop- 
ment of all rational life is found in communion with him. 
Thus the separation of individual lives and the want of 
any common consciousness are in a measure overcome, 
and we reach the assertion, applied in a transcendental 
way : We live and move and have our being in God. 

The use of such a word as posits marks the illusion 
which attends on a technical scheme. The mind per- 
ceives, reflects, infers ; it does not posit, as an act distinct 
from any and all of these. None of these words can take 
the place of the new term, because they bear the mind 
back to familiar things which fail to cover the form of 
action expressed in the word posit. Positing is a sort of 
laying the foundation-stones of being, when the mind is 
the sole architect of its intellectual structures. It covers 
a transcendental idea very helpful to a transcendental phi- 
losophy. It secures a notion distinct enough to be made 
a stepping-stone in thought, and remote enough to escape 



438 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

the contradictions and corrections of experience. Words 
thus take on an elasticity which makes them the conven- 
ient instruments of a new method. 

§ 17. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775) was 
closely united to Fichte. Fichte and Spinoza furnished 
the ideas which he developed in his '' System of Iden- 
tity." He identified matter and mind in the Absolute, 
but he identified them under the idealistic conception of 
them offered by Fichte, as object and subject. They are 
not, as with Spinoza, inseparable attributes of one being, 
but distinctions evolved in the activity of one being. An 
original unity passes into two forms of expression, the 
positive or ideal, the negative or real. The positive pole 
is spirit, the negative pole is nature. The ruling concep- 
tion of philosophy, as a rendering of the necessary gene- 
sis of things, was strong in the mind of Schelling. It 
assumes two forms, a tracing of the passage of nature 
into intelligence and of intelligence into nature. The 
first effort issues in speculative physics, the second in 
transcendental philosophy. In physics, we trace the ob- 
jective as it gives occasion to the subjective and rises into 
it. In metaphysics, we trace the objective as it springs 
from the subjective, the truly productive force of the uni- 
verse. The objective and subjective hold each other in 
poise, and sustain each other as correlative parts of one 
process. The entire effort of science is to permeate 
physical facts with intelligence. It is successful in the 
degree in which this is accomplished. Matter as matter 
is simply extinct mind. The processes of nature rise, as 
they advance, more and more distinctly, as in man, into 
conscious intelligence. All the forces of the universe are 
reducible into ideal relations. History is a progressive 
revelation of the Absolute. God is not visible in any one 



SCHELLING. 439 

act. He is disclosed only in the historic growth of events, 
that movement in which the conscious and the uncon- 
scious separate themselves more perfectly, and more per- 
fectly reflect each other. Single intelligences are inte- 
grant parts in this moral order, which goes on to complete 
itself in the harmony of the objective and subjective, the 
fixed and the free. There have been three periods in his- 
tory — the revelation of the Absolute — the period of fate, 
of nature, and of providence. What is first regarded as 
fate comes to be conceived as nature, and gives rise to 
the mastery incident to obedience to law. Later, nature 
is accepted as providence, the revelation of the all-com- 
prehensive intelligence. Final causes are an expression 
of the harmony which belongs to intelligence in its full 
unfolding. In the entire movement there is " one force, 
one changing play, one interweaving of forces, one bent, 
one impulse toward ever-higher life." Complete intelli- 
gence does not so much anticipate the movement as arise 
from it. Nature was regarded by Schelling as the uncon- 
scious expression of spirit; the same spirit whose activity 
we apprehend in consciousness. The soul of the world is 
struggling on toward a complete expression and knowl- 
edge of itself. Spirit, on the other hand, in full self- 
consciousness, finds itself dealing with things in their un- 
conscious and necessary action. It harmonizes its action 
with them under the scheme of teleology and of art. 
Nature is thus moving toward intelligence, and intelli- 
gence toward a more perfect mastery of nature. The 
Absolute, from which this double movement springs, was 
with Schelling little more than a point of indifference 
from which the two tendencies, expressed in nature and 
in spirit, take their rise. It thus subserved no real pur- 
pose of explanation, and gave no substantial unity. The 



440 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

mind simply played with the Absolute as a notion of God 
which had lost all definite content. 

The affinity of idealism with moral insight was ob- 
served in Fichte, its affinity with artistic penetration is 
apparent in Schelling. The conscious and the uncon- 
scious, form and substance, find complete union in the 
beautiful thing. Our apprehension of this relation is our 
apprehension of beauty. The conceptions of Schelling 
were so wholly speculative and personal that he was not 
able to bind them fast as a philosophy. Gathering his 
ideas from many quarters, he passed on toward mysti- 
cism, and so discredited his more sober expression by for- 
saking it. It is the nemesis of idealism that its successive 
phases, like the steps of one wandering amid drifting 
snows, obliterate and obscure each other, and no more 
leave a path behind them than they pursue one before 
them. The fascination of idealism is the range and scope 
and constructive force it gives to ideas. Its weakness is 
that it so obscures the deep division between the uncon- 
scious and the conscious ; so unites the regal, exclusive 
movement of mind in its own clear light of reason with 
the progress of events along the blind trail of causes, so 
identifies the person before the glass with the image in 
the glass, that our thoughts lose all distinctions, stoop 
from their high point of observation, and go drifting be- 
fore the wind. There is no clear vision till we recognize 
consciousness as the sole medium of mind. 

§ 1 8. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770) united his 
philosophy, in turn, directly to that of Schelling. He 
modified its fundamental idea, and then gave it a much 
more systematic, comprehensive, and productive state- 
ment. Hegel approved the philosophy of Schelling in 
that it concerned itself with things, and assumed a more 



HEGEL. 441 

concrete form. In spite of his extreme idealism, Hegel 
entertained some very positive, realistic tendencies, and 
brought his methods to the discussion of the problems of 
history, society, and art. Schelling's philosophy was a 
system of identity. It turned on a double movement in 
nature and in spirit, interpreting each other. Hegel re- 
jected this double movement as inadequately united in 
the Absolute. He sought for the two some more single 
and sufficient source. He found this in pure thought. 
All interpretation, all reality, are associated with thought. 
Without thought there can be no reality. Thought is 
the primary term in all movement, the '' idea," '* the dia- 
lectic idea," from which all things proceed. In absolute 
knowledge, thought and being are recognized as identical. 
The rational is real and the real is rational. 

But this free, primitive thought, from whose activity 
all things spring, which lies at the basis of the material 
and the spiritual world, is not a product of consciousness, 
it is rather a potentiality whose highest manifestation is 
to be found in the philosophic consciousness. Thought, 
not necessarily conscious in its progress, completes itself 
in this grasp of its own entire method of development. 
Its principal stages are consciousness, self-consciousness, 
reason, ethical action, religion, absolute knowledge. 
Absolute knowledge lies in tracing this path of develop- 
ment. The unconscious forms of thought underlie its 
conscious forms, and find their highest expression in them. 
Thought, the one productive process capable of this 
double expression, takes the place of the Absolute in the 
system of Schelling. The Absolute of Hegel is the 
rhythmical movement of thought in which God unfolds 
himself. God stands revealed in the very organism of 
thought, in the " idea," in nature and in mind. The 



442 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

world is understood as a process. Evolution is an evolu- 
tion of thoughts, not of things. Thoughts are things. 
The dogmatic disposition, first in order, frames a narrow, 
exact statement of truth, and enforces it as final. Then 
comes scepticism, with more inquiry, more insight, and 
denies, point by point, the sufBciency and applicability 
of dogmatic formulae. 

The process of reconciliation is the work of philosophy, 
and involves the interpretation of the world as a growing, 
changeable product of thought, to be grasped, not stati- 
cally, but dynamically, as that which is constantly be- 
coming other and more than it is. Idealism carries this 
view of unfolding truth as a perpetual flow of thought, a 
stream that becomes more and more transparent by its 
own movement, to its utmost terms. We look on the 
physical world as we might look on a river, beating 
against the rocks that fill its channel and retard it. The 
first impression is one of stable relations, remaining much 
the same, no matter how long contemplated. This is the 
sensuous aspect of facts. The least effort at comprehen- 
sion alters the conception. In the world at large, as in 
the running brook, our sensations are renewed every 
moment. They are simply symbolical terms which lead 
us to the energies and dependencies by which we are 
encompassed — which are open to our thought. The mo- 
ment we launch out on these intellectual connections we 
leave the sensuous terms behind us. The significancy of 
events is not in them. We find ourselves dealing with 
rational terms which glide one into another by virtue of 
sequences, living only in the mind. When one speaks, 
the words are set afloat in the intellectual world by the 
buoyant force of thought, and are nothing without it. 
The stream on which the eye first rests as a mobile, in- 



HEGEL. 443 

deed, yet well-defined, fact becomes a complicated inter- 
play of forces, uniting things near and remote, and, under 
apparent sameness of phenomena, expressing ever-renewed 
and ever-changeable energies. Idealism, by drawing at- 
tention at once to the flow of events which involve all the 
relations of reason, penetrates to the substance of things, 
and evolves whatever intellectual life they contain. How 
great soever its defects, it is always a relief to turn to 
idealism from a superficial tracing of phenomena which 
leaves the thought-processes involved in them undis- 
closed. If sensuous impressions are not the instant prod- 
uct of the thought which floats them, it is far more 
stimulating so to regard them, than to accept their inner 
force as a slow evolution of their outer form. 

Idealism, as unfolded by Hegel, has been a powerful 
and fascinating philosophy, because of the supremacy it 
gives to rational relations, because of the breadth and in- 
sight with which it traces them under so many forms of 
facts, and because of an inner coherence and fidelity to 
itself by which it holds fast to the methods it has once 
laid down. The comprehensiveness which gave weight 
to the philosophy of Kant involved inconsistency and 
contradiction. The comprehensiveness of Hegel, though 
attended with much obscurity, arose from one funda- 
mental idea, broadly applied. The strength of the sys- 
tem lies in the vigor with which it lays hold of the true 
significancy of the world, its revelation of rational rela- 
tions ; and its weakness, in the method in which it dwarfs 
and obscures the permanent way-marks of truth, and so 
makes its own path private, dark, remote, inaccessible as 
a highway for man. The sensuous world, no more than 
language, can be regarded as the immediate product of 
the thought that expounds it. Much less can reason be 



444 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

given an unconscious, impersonal form, and still be made 
to retain its own living energy. Whatever we impart by 
this method to that below, we take from that above. 
Reason must forever retain its own inner, conscious co- 
herence, or it brings no light, and stands in no affiliation 
with the mind of man. Phenomenal terms may disclose 
very much to us, but their disclosure all lies in leading us 
to pure, rational relations other than, and deeper than, 
themselves. This is our experience, and we cannot inter- 
pret experience by a law new to it. 

The Absolute of Hegel was not the personal Absolute 
of faith, but that background of reality which underlies 
the rhythmic unfolding of thought, is fully contained in 
it and expressed by it. It is not a higher, deeper con- 
sciousness enclosing all, and pushing all forward, but only 
the sense of reality by which we buoy up the process it- 
self — a form, a movement which is coming into the light, 
rather than one coming out of it. 

Hence a portion of Hegelians — " the Left " — rejected 
the Absolute of Hegel. The universe is to be regarded 
only as a series of relations, the products of philosophic 
thought. Under this rejection, the universe either shrinks 
back again into a personal experience, and philosophy re- 
treats on Fichte ; or the physical universe, conceded sub- 
stantial being, becomes the germ of intellectual life, pass- 
ing by development from the unconscious to the conscious, 
mounting up by steps of organic life into philosophy. 

A difficulty with idealism is that it essays to start with- 
out a starting-point. Its first step must be as intelligible 
as its second and third, and hence it recognizes no Abso- 
lute that rises above and beyond the universe. Its Abso- 
lute is only another name for the universal, philosophic 
process. Whenever the understanding stops weaving, 



I 



HEGEL. 445 

and wishes to attach its web, it is wholly at a loss ; for 
the fundamental conception of the movement is that it 
shall accept no first terms. It can occupy itself only with 
an eternal regress and progress of logical implications. 
Hegelianism seemed successful so long as it confined 
itself to the flow of thought. The moment it was asked 
to give conditions to that which had been accepted as 
unconditional and absolute, it had nothing satisfactory 
to say. It was bound to a process, and to that process it 
must adhere. All ulterior purposes and anterior reasons 
must sink into the movement itself. Simple movement, 
Avithout a whence or a whither, a why or a wherefore, 
must satisfy us. The particularity of things is swallowed 
up in their generality. We may navigate the stream at 
liberty, but we must not ask to land. Landing is limita- 
tion, the weakness of thought, not its strength ; the cut- 
ting short of philosophy, not its extension. It is not 
easy to create a grander intellectual world, nor yet a more 
homeless and unreal one, one better fitted for restless and 
peremptory thought, and less well fitted for the affections 
of men — so readily wearied, so suppliant of shelter — 
than this system of Hegel, The logical processes sub- 
merged the perceptions, and then swept, like a universal 
flood, over the face of the whole earth. 

§ 19. The step with which Hegel traversed the universe 
of pure thought, whose highways had been thrown up 
along the lines of evolution from the beginning, was always 
one of triplets. This movement he caught from Schell- 
ing, Fichte, and Kant, though he gave peculiar force and 
precision to it. It became with him the inevitable a priori 
gait of the mind. Kant had introduced the triadic law, the 
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in connection with the 
categories. Xhus we have, under quality, in its exposi- 



44^ THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

tion, reality, negation, limitation. The limits are a syn- 
thesis of affirmation and negation, inclusion and exclusion, 
in a definite proposition. Definition is the first step in 
logic, and this triadic law expresses in it its purely formal 
movement. The positive apprehension in which the 
reality lies, the opposition which this implies to things 
unlike it, the union of the two in discriminating statement, 
together constitute definition, definiteness of idea, an idea 
in its relations. 

This formal movement, under which discrimination goes 
forward, Hegel carries very ingeniously, and at times in- 
structively, into all fields of inquiry, as the universal norm. 
Thus pure activity in consciousness gives us sensations, 
internal states ; these in their limitations and relations lay 
down for us the external world ; the two, reunited, issue 
in completed thought. The three corresponding powers 
are sense, understanding, and reason. The equivalent 
forms of knowledge are logic, science, and philosophy. 
In logic, the incipient idea Is that of being. This separates 
itself from non-being ; the two unite in the notion of be- 
coming. In the philosophy of mind, mind, in its subjec- 
tive aspect, gives us psychology, anthropology ; in its 
objective characteristics, ethics, jurisprudence ; In the re- 
sumption of the two, religion, philosophy. While these 
triple dependencies, everywhere underlying each other, 
stand out at times with clearness, at other times they need 
the aid of a constructive Imagination, making the most of 
the slightest hints of form. Hegel, having so definite a 
mould In which to render the facts, gave them, occasion- 
ally, an extension to suit the exigencies of the method. 
Logic becomes with him a more comprehensive depart- 
ment than it ordinarily is. Philosophy ceases to be a 
broad presentation of knowledge, in the relation of its 



i 



IDEALISM. 447 

several parts to each other and in their dependence on the 
powers of the mind, and becomes an ingenious application 
of fixed formulae to physical and intellectual phenomena. 
In spite, therefore, of occasional suggestiveness, the move- 
ment tends to increasing weariness and barrenness. The 
rigidity of a logical process takes the place of the freshness, 
multiplicity, and variety of things and events. The form- 
elements become more and more formal, and we at length 
drag our net in empty waters. 

§ 20. Idealism, as a system of philosophy, culminated 
in Hegel. It has taken on, since his time, no new phase 
of power, and has hardly retained its old strength. How- 
ever much a few patient disciples may be fascinated 
with the joint simplicity and obscurity of Hegelianism, it 
makes no way as a branch of knowledge. How is it that 
so much ingenuity and insight give rise to a theory so 
empty of all substantial acquisition? A leading reason 
is an antecedent misapprehension of the purpose of phi- 
losophy. Its real purpose is to run out the boundaries 
of truth, and to find the title-deeds of each portion of its 
territory. It is a science of discovery, not of invention. 
The impression which gives rise to a speculation, like 
Hegelianism, is something very different from this. It is 
that all the terms and starting-points of knowledge can 
be fully penetrated by reason, made equally transparent 
under the light of philosophy. Thus the mind struggles 
to carry the force of necessary principles to all depart- 
ments of inquiry. Such an effort can only issue in an 
airy oversight of facts here, in a dreamy expansion of no- 
tions there, and in distortion almost everywhere. Simply 
because our senses give us their own opaque data, these 
data can neither be altered nor dispensed with, in the pre- 
cise form in which they are rendered. To sweep through 



448 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

all facts with a reasoning process, is to sweep over and 
trample under foot the larger share of them. All that 
sound philosophy can do is to accept each and every 
faculty in the full contribution which it makes to our 
intellectual wealth. Empiricism retains its power of re- 
sistance to a method which, rendering some of the rela- 
tions of knowledge, is not able to fill in the meagre outline 
with the specific qualities and minute features of that 
world of realities which sustains our intellectual steps. 
Idealism and empiricism are opposed errors. Idealism 
gives philosophy a range impossible to it. It fails of in- 
telligible results. Empiricism turns to observation. It 
forgets, or inadequately treats, the expository ideas which 
accompany all its inquiries. It even goes so far as to 
deny, in their higher forms, the validity of those explana- 
tory processes which hold all the light of thought. It is 
ready to overlook the infinite radiation of intelligence, 
and to shut in the spiritual world by a wall of its own 
construction, as if it were a garden of herbs. Sound 
thought is equally removed from both methods. It ac- 
cepts sense, it accepts insight, and unites the two in a 
glowing landscape, palpitating with revelation. 

Idealism easily issues in weakening what it has under- 
taken to magnify. We quite assent to the integrity and 
scope of reason, its perfect coherence within itself, as 
asserted by Hegel. Yet the philosophy of Hegel hardly 
assigns reason its true strength. Reason, under the evo- 
lution of events, is rising into the light, rather than abid- 
ing in the light. Light is not forever streaming from it, 
but is by an obscure method slowly derived from it. The 
reason of men has range, not because it is moving in 
infinite, open spaces of intelligence, but because it itself 
is the highest revelation of the inner idea, the most dis- 



IDEALISM. 449 

tinct striking of truth into the light. The Infinite Reason, 
as revelation, is to be found in us and beyond us, not 
around us and behind us. The mind is not resting, with 
level wing, on an atmosphere of wisdom, it is feeling the 
inflation of a little wind, begotten in its own growth. 
The mind gladly escapes from so thin and rarefied a me- 
dium, back again to a universal air, compacted through- 
out by the superincumbent pressure of divine thought. A 
true anthropomorphism is refreshing after the vain beat- 
ing about of a disembodied spirit. The universality we 
would affirm of reason is not a monopoly of the human 
mind, but a full participation of man in the forms of 
thought as they lie traced for us in the universe of things, 
not themselves visions, but words articulated in truth and 
articulating truth — the overflow of Infinite Reason. We 
are glad to walk in a way blazed for us through the bound- 
less stretch of created things. A mistaken notion of phi- 
losophy issues in expecting of thought impossible things. 
The impossible, illuding us, leaves us weaker than we 
really are. Striving to know more than we can, we come 
to know less than we might. Agnosticism is the downfall 
of idealism. 

A second reason why these astonishing excursions of 
speculation are possible is that they start in oversight 
of the first truths of experience, and so do not feel their 
restraint. German philosophy is full of the notion that 
there are unconscious and conscious movements in 
thought, essentially one in kind. The evolution of 
events is with Hegel an evolution of reason, as certainly 
as is the succession of thoughts in consciousness. Here- 
in a fundamental division of experience is set aside without 
proof and without clearness of conception. Consciousness 
is the one exclusive and universal form-element of thought, 
29 



450 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

and thought the sole activity of reason. A thought with- 
out this condition of consciousness is as foreign to experi- 
ence as a force that has no centre or Hnes of action in 
space. Neither finds any hint of interpretation in obser- 
vation. Tlie flowing together of the conscious and the 
unconscious in philosophy obliterates, in advance, the 
shore-lines of phenomena, and leaves the whole outlook 
one of shifting and interchangeable parts. We have lost 
the fundamental distinction on which our entire experi- 
ence rests. This taken away, exposition and apprehen- 
sion perish with it. If we cannot discriminate between 
a movement in things and a coherence in thought, be- 
tween the links of reason that can abide only in the light, 
and the connection of physical events that have in them 
no touch of comprehension, we have lost sight of the 
widest distinction in inner nature and outward develop- 
ment that belongs to knowledge. All minor shades of 
confusion become unimportant, and wholly impotent in 
checking the career of speculation. Our philosophy opens 
its effort by utterly confounding the terms of knowledge, 
not by explaining or justifying them. No matter in how 
many ways spiritual energies and physical forces inter- 
act ; no matter how long may be the lines along which 
they skirt each other, they are the most incomparable 
and eternally distinct of all objects of thought. 

Closely allied with this confusion of first terms is the 
effort to give philosophy the form of monism. Unity of 
relation is displaced by oneness of nature. If we were to 
reach the monism of which this inquiry is in search, we 
should find ourselves hopelessly imprisoned in it, unable 
to escape thence into the largeness and variety of the 
universe. In the physical world, even, we are less and 
less attaining oneness of substance, singleness of nature. ^ 



MONISM. 45 1 

Fundamental diversities are as much a condition of unity 
as complete concurrence in constructive relations. Unity 
is the product of reason, the relations of thought ex- 
pressed in the simple and the manifold. The dualistic 
form of the world is but the first branching of energies 
which are to ramify into the distinct parts and portions 
of the universe. Philosophy has either confused the 
division between matter and mind, or given it an abso- 
lute depth wholly fanciful — a depth which cannot belong 
to it, as the two run parallel in momentary interaction 
through the whole sweep of being. It is an equally fatal 
error either to break the universe asunder along this plane 
of cleavage, or to allow these distinctions of thought to 
lapse again, as poles in a galvanic circuit not yet active. 
We must accept first terms at their true value, if our 
later results are to show any intelligible correspondence 
with the facts. Monism is a reduction of the conditions 
of comprehension, not an extension of them in that circuit 
by which they return into each other. 

The result of the effort of German philosophy, since the 
time of Spinoza, to attain monism, has been a constant 
sinking of reason at its very centre, a loss of any real Ab- 
solute, a personal, typical consciousness of truth. . With 
Kant, the afifirmation of a Divine Being is transcendental. 
We cannot practically escape the assertion, but we cannot 
rationally verify it. Fichte, in striving to trace individual 
development, had but a secondary hold on the Absolute. 
The Absolute of Schelling is but a vague point of depart- 
ure for nature and spirit. ' The Absolute of Hegel is 
hardly more than another term for an endless process. 
Monism, in raising matter toward mind, correspondingly 
depresses mind toward matter, till the two meet under 
conditions true to neither. Thus the fundamental im- 



452 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

pulse which impels us into philosophy, the desire to put a 
sufficient reason back of things, is sacrificed to philosophy, 
and we are compelled, in one way or another, to accept 
the movement of events as its own explanation. We are 
as busy as ants in running backward and forward, but the 
onlooker can tell neither what we are pursuing nor what 
we have attained. The waters which, previous to our in- 
quiry, seemed to spring up, like those of a fountain, at 
one centre, fed by a higher source, slowly subside under 
our speculation to a uniform level, and are expanded as a 
self-contained pool whose currents, whatever they may be, 
are referrible to nothing beyond itself. We start with the 
notion of a true Absolute. We end by finding it in the 
finite, and so our philosophy sinks back into itself, with 
nothing to show but a generative process. Better far to 
remain at the advent of effort, aspiring to belief, than to 
drop into the repose of weariness, our only sufficient reason 
being the insufficiency of reason itself, its hopeless return 
on its own steps. This sentiment may not seem to apply to 
the philosophy of Hegel. Yet, after infinite activity, which 
we mistake for satisfying labor, we are left to fill ourselves 
with the wind of our own motion, to rest in a process, to 
cradle ourselves to sleep with the restless rhythm of waves 
that beat upon no shore. There is only one conception 
which lifts itself sufficiently above the mind to give it true 
repose, that of Infinite Reason, in the clear light of whose 
gracious purposes all movements can go forth and return. 
Idealism, notwithstanding the immense intellectual ac- 
tivity elicited by it, fails at once under the clear and 
pungent demand for fruit, as the sole adequate test of 
speculation. When we accept mental sagacity as its own 
reward, we are shortly left without even this recompense. 
Idealism makes important contributions to philosophy, 



IDEALISM. 453 

but, as itself a philosophy, it wins and retains no ground. 
It does not annex itself to knowledge, in direct and cer- 
tain expansion of it. As a tendency, it helps to hold 
empiricism in check. The two constitute the balancing- 
pole with which the mind maintains its equilibrium, and 
saves itself from falling into the gulf of nescience, as it 
pursues its narrow and tremulous path across the abyss. 
Opposite as they are to each other, idealism and empiri- 
cism are more nearly allied than is either of them to real- 
ism. A little excess on this or that side leads instantly 
to the opposite conclusion. Empiricism often leaves the 
mind too little power to pronounce on the reality of the 
external world, and so locks it up in its own impressions. 
Idealism, unable to give sufficient sweep to the net of 
thought to enclose physical facts, accepts these facts as 
themselves a portion of the unconscious products of mind. 
If we start in the direction of materialism, we lift, for the 
ends of exposition, physical processes into mental ones ; 
if we turn toward idealism, we are constantly tempted to 
depress mental activity, till it can be made to cover phys- 
ical connections. In either case, the two terms approach 
each other, and are lost to the vision of experience in 
that region of chimeras, the unconscious. This becomes, 
in either theory, the unexplored land whence flow all our 
streams of thought, whether, in the end, they turn to the 
right or turn to the left. 

There are two ultimate and inescapable terms of knowl- 
edge, phenomena and the ideas under which they are ren- 
dered in reason. When empiricism exaggerates the one, 
idealism, in reaction, exaggerates the other, and so by the 
rhythm of a sinking and rising movement the mind wings 
its way. 

The purely speculative and tentative character of ideal- 



454 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

ism is shown in the fact that it retains no one position, 
but is in perpetual transfer from position to position. 
Each succeeding form grows out of the previous one, 
but with such irregularity and detachment as to leave 
no common and symmetrical axis. Its most continuous 
development lies between Kant and Hegel. Idealism can 
do no better than to hold fast, with expansion and cor- 
rection, where Hegel left off. Yet Hegelianism rendered 
the systems behind it little more than dry pith, and began 
at once to yield its own substance to a like free and spo- 
radic growth. The idealistic materialism spoke most con- 
temptuously of the work of Hegel, while itself expressing 
one impulse of the general movement. 

This changeableness of a phase of thought shows con- 
clusively that the star which guides it has not yet settled 
down over the birthplace of truth. Our conceptions of 
truth are, indeed, as Hegel apprehended them, shifting 
ones. We hold fast spiritual truth, not with a close, 
suffocating grasp, but with an open, gentle hand, which 
allows all processes of change to proceed as if we were 
dealing with a sensitive, living thing. There lies between 
the penetrative, emotional, mobile mind and the revealing 
fact a living pulsation, which makes their ministration to 
each other reciprocal and vital. But this amplification, 
in which the power of truth lies, is not an aimless one, 
leaving nothing behind it, securing nothing before it. It 
is rather a se'ries of dissolving views which, on the same 
canvas, rehearses a steady flow of events, in close rela- 
tion either way. Idealism is not condemned because it 
shifts its ground constantly, but because there is no con- 
tinuity in its successive stages, no conquered territory in 
its several positions. There is flux, not growth, a pursuit 
of a purpose which refuses to be achieved. 



I 



IDEALISM. 455 

Idealism readily affiliates with ethical, aesthetic, and 
religious ideas. These ideas have, in a high degree, the 
expansive and propagatory power which characterizes 
the methods of idealism. Hegel was preeminently re- 
ligious in his bent of thought. God was with him the 
" category of categories — the subject of all absolute predi- 
cates." But there lies against his philosophy the same 
objection which, for a kindred reason, presses upon that 
of Spinoza. He retains words from which he has elimi- 
nated the familiar meaning. The idea, the thought- 
process, the movement of reason within itself, is identi- 
fied with God. Men, rising gradually, in being and knowl- 
edge, into the light of consciousness, are organic with this 
one self-contained idea, with God. The immanence of 
God means not so much his spiritual omnipresence as the 
identity of God with each and all the movements of in- 
telligence. Though we have the same number of count- 
ers given us as of old, when we come to reckon them up 
we find that they stand for very different values. 

This philosophy may. wish to retain, and may employ 
language which does retain, the personality of God and 
man, but the very conception of personality, and of its 
relation to reason, is profoundly altered. Reason, under 
the view prompted and confirmed by experience, inheres 
in clear, conscious intelligence, the only expression of 
personality. Personality is not the product of reason, 
reason is the activity of personality, moving, with inhe- 
rent insight, in the one spiritual realm of conscious, re- 
flective life. God is not, therefore, an idea, a process, an 
expression of reason ; he is personality, a spiritual pro- 
ductive power lying back of all these. 

If we restore God, in thought, to this his position of 
creative comprehending intelligence, then the philosophy 



45^ THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

as one of idea, as the organic unfolding of reason within 
itself, disappears. We cannot content ourselves with a 
process, we have sought and found a person. We stand 
before the clear, impelling eye of pure insight. We are 
back on the basis of God and man and the world which 
lies between them, no longer as phases of a necessary 
evolution, but as definite points and productive powers 
in a spiritual universe. 

Thus, while the Hegelian who has more of the temper 
of the master may magnify personality and closely adhere 
to the familiar terminology of the intellectual world, the 
colder and more critical disciple quietly deals with the 
simple, self-sustained movement of the idea, and sweeps 
before it, as if it were a veritable deluge, all our familiar 
conceptions. 

In proportion as Hegelianism is a final philosophy, it 
alters the nature and relations of what we term person- 
ality ; in the degree in which it retains these, does it lose 
its peculiar scope as a theory of the universe. 

Hegel encounters, in common with all idealists, the 
difficulty which lay in the path of Fichte, the difficulty 
of saving the particular and yet reaching the general. It 
is not the empirical ego, protests Fichte, that is the source 
of the world, but the transcendental ego, holding both the 
finite and the infinite in its essential nature. But what is 
this supreme ego, and what its relation to the poor, em- 
pirical ^^^ which is our sole term of interpretation? In 
answering these questions, we shall engulf the world with 
all its beauty of particulars in a universal of which we 
have only the most evanescent and visionary notions. If 
we must lose either, let us lose, with the empiricist, the 
underlying power, and not, with the idealist, the vision 
definite, clear, and divine, of the universe about us. We 



IDEALISM. 457 

can more readily climb from things to thoughts, than we 
can descend from thoughts to things. If we are to be 
put off with a process, let it be the sensuous process of 
the universe and not the fanciful process of a single phi- 
losopher. Let us. in keeping with the order of events, 
first plant our feet, and then our thoughts, on the firm 
earth. 

Our knowledge is made up of two incommensurable 
terms, the sensuous and the rational. The rational pene- 
trates and interprets the sensuous; the sensuous contains, 
expresses, and holds firm the rational. The polarity of 
our knowledge is akin to the polarity of the mind itself 
as perceptive and interpreting power. While these two 
movements of mind are inseparable from each other, as 
much so as form and idea, if we wish to rank them in 
reference to each other, we must find the true construct- 
ive energ}^ in the rational rendering process. 

Herein lay the merit of Hegel. He gave his attention 
— by far too exclusive attention — to the rational rela- 
tions which impart coherence and substance to knowl- 
edge. He absorbed the sensuous symbol in the idea 
which gives it significance. He thus in the end weak- 
ened the idea itself, Avhich cannot hold on its way without 
the symbols which direct and steady its steps. We can- 
not follow art without workmanship. The lines of our 
geometrical figure are no part of the demonstration, but 
the demonstration cannot proceed without them. The 
mind cannot lose sicrht of the svmbols which it is to render 
in terms of reason, and retain the reasoning process. 
The path of reason must be beaten by its own footsteps. 
Schelling's assertion concerning Hegel was fatal : '' His 
philosophy is a succession of metaphors." 

The successes of Hegel were achieved in fields where 



458 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

the ruling idea is of preeminent moment, and the phe- 
nomena under it changeable and readily supplied. Where 
the symbols are definite, minute, final, as in physical in- 
quiry, his philosophy had not much to say. In art, his- 
tory, religion, his insight was more fruitful. 

His dialectic was a kind of logic, rendering intellectual 
relations in an abstract form. We see this in his apo- 
thegms. What is real is rational. What is rational is 
real. The intelligible is the real. The truth of necessity 
is liberty. There is a vivid flash of light in these asser- 
tions, but they give us no one definite exposition. They 
express the most general relation of the constructive 
thought to all its manifold symbols. They overpower 
for the moment the sense of variety and independence in 
things, with a sense of the one office of expression they 
render to ideas. Thus necessity, it is said, must be the 
product of and expounded by the antecedent liberty of 
thought. 

Yet you must pass from maxims like these to the de- 
tails of experience or they remain unfruitful. You have 
received a certain impulse, but the impulse does not carry 
you on your way. A prophetic, intellectual force attaches 
itself to a bold spirit, like that of Hegel, but the moment 
the weary march of progress is renewed, the moment our 
prayer is. Give us this day our daily bread, our prophet 
leaves us, and our labor returns to us on the old, familiar 
hard terms. 

PART HI. 

IDEALISTIC MATERIALISM. 

§ 21. As so many are restless under the adjective ma- 
terialistic, and as it so rarely applies in its full force to 



SCHOPENHAUER. 459 

any system, it is well to draw attention once more to the 
fact that materialism, empiricism, is a thing of many de- 
grees. While fully developed materialism involves the 
assertion that intellectual and physical phenomena belong 
to the same series, of which material connections are the 
type, there are many conclusions which stop short of this 
statement, and yet are in line with it. Any philosophy 
which finds its primary, interpreting idea in material de- 
pendencies, which extends the law of causation to intel- 
lectual relations, is materialistic in its tendency. In 
rendering the universe, it is losing balance on the physi- 
cal side. 

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788) adopted the fundamental 
notion of Kant, the subjective character of the forms of 
thought, but regarded the idealism of Hegel as an unin- 
telligible and preposterous speculation. Yet his method 
is not wholly unlike that of Hegel. The philosophy of 
Hegel lies in tracing the ■' idea," as a pure development 
of thought. Schopenhauer puts will in place of idea, 
allies it with force, and then follows this development of 
energy as offered in the world of realities, in place of the 
development of thought in the world of ideas. 

Schopenhauer was strongly idealistic. He opened his 
philosophy with the assertion, The world is my notion ; 
Things are objects of knowledge only by the relations we 
put upon them ; There is no object without a subject. 
We are not, however, with Fichte, to derive the objective 
from the subjective. The subjective presupposes the ob- 
jective, and the law of causation under which we construct 
our knowledge is the universal law of things. That 
which is the innermost essence of things, the one perva- 
sive noumenon, is will. The will is known by us, in our 
own experience, in its inner energy as well as in its outer 



460 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

forms. We here apprehend directly the mystery of the 
production of effects by causes. The will interprets to 
us all forces. The forces of the world should be regarded 
as identical with will. 

Schopenhauer is materialistic in his philosophy, because 
will, first recognized as a causal agent in ourselves, is 
traced by him as the one supreme source of all events. 
The lower expressions of will are physical forces. Higher 
manifestations are those of the organic world. Will, in 
every form of life, is striving to assert itself, to secure a 
correspondence between the organism and its circum- 
stances. Psychical states come forward as an incident of 
this effort. In automatic action the impulse accom- 
plishes its object perfectly. Consciousness arises when 
the impulse is ineffectual in reaching its end. When the 
stimulus is again effective, consciousness disappears. 
Habit and association take its place. Thus the mind, 
in its unfolding, rests on the nervous, automatic action 
which underlies it. His psychology is of the empirical 
cast, rendered in terms of evolution. His philosophy, in 
spite of its origin in idealism, is a retreat from the reason, 
as giving the terms of comprehension, and an assimilation 
of mental processes to antecedent physical activities. 

Schopenhauer was a pessimist. He looked upon life 
as a futile struggle of the will, always lamentable, often 
horrible. Art brings consolation because in it we cease 
to search into things in this stress of strife, and contem- 
plate each object in itself. We thus reach the idea which 
lies back of a work of art, and are no longer tortured by 
the unattainable in experience. Will asserts itself as a 
blind impulse to live. It pushes relentlessly against the 
obstacles and evils which oppose it. An ethical temper 
puts us in sympathy, through the whole range of human 



HARTMANN. 46 1 

life, with the suffering and sorrow of this growing and 
futile effort. The highest ethical attainment is the re- 
duction of evil by the reduction of the will to live. In 
rising out of life, and leaving it behind us, we reach 
Nirvana. 

The philosophy of Schopenhauer made very little way 
during his life. Later, it commanded some attention, but 
it is not sufficiently systematic, or closely enough united 
to any prevailing tendency, to gain any considerable foot- 
ing. Its chief office was a protest against the extreme 
speculative elements in the philosophy of Hegel. Scho- 
penhauer seems to have entertained great dislike to 
Hegel, possibly enhanced by the overshadowing influence 
of Hegel, and his own ill success as private lecturer in 
the University of Berlin. The tide of pure idealism was 
too strong for him to make any considerable ripple on 
its surface. It was not till this movement had, in a meas- 
ure, expended itself, and the conditions were present for 
a reaction, that his philosophy began to gain ground. It, 
in common with most Ge'rman philosophy, struck root in 
Kant's philosophy, Schopenhauer was a pupil of Fichte. 
A good many very alien opinions have shared his initial 
error, an assertion of a direct knowledge of force in con- 
sciousness. Yet we reach noumena no more there than 
elsewhere, save as a rational inference. 

§ 22. The philosophy of E. v. Hartmann is closely 
allied to that of Schopenhauer. The primitive term in- 
volves, according to it, not simply will but idea also. The 
original, impulsive force is not a blind one, but is under 
the direction of definite, constructive activity. The un- 
conscious spirit which lies beneath all development in- 
cludes two. coordinate functions. The idea cannot secure 
its own development without the will, nor can the will 



462 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

guide the unfolding of which it is the source. Hartmann 
thus unites the logical idea of Hegel to the original 
essence of Schopenhauer. The form under which this 
unconscious spirit develops itself is not the logical expan- 
sion of Hegel, but the empirical evolution of the phys- 
ical world. Consciousness is a later stage of growth. 
The primitive, unconscious intelligence is the leading 
tenet of this philosophy. 

Hartmann, like Schopenhauer, was a pessimist. The 
will is an ever-restless, unsatisfied impulse, only partially 
corrected by the idea. The only escape from the pain 
incident to insatiable desire is the intensification of intel- 
lectual consciousness, the victory of the idea over the 
will. The two are incapable of any ultimate harmony. 
In the triumph of the idea, the movement impelled by 
the will is arrested, and peace obtained. The philosophy 
of Hartmann is monistic, uniting force and thought in 
one primitive term. And yet this unity is not one of 
concordant tendencies. The universe is first the uncon- 
scious, and later the conscious, unfolding of one form of 
being. 

There is in this philosophy a hopeless blending of 
physical and spiritual phenomena. It renders physical 
elements in intellectual terms, and then expands them 
under forms which belong chiefly to the material world. 
Instead of accepting the division between the material 
and the mental, which belongs to all experience, it as- 
sumes a point of indifference between them, and makes 
all later divergence the fruit of development. It readily 
accomplishes this by setting aside the inseparable form- 
element of thought, consciousness, and wandering forth 
into the region of the unconscious, where we have not, and 
never can have, the slightest empirical ground of affirm- 



HARTMANN. 463 

ing one thing or another. There is nothing left to check 
our fancy. The philosophy is a philosophy of the uncon- 
scious — and therefore of the absolutely unknown — open- 
ing the way equally to physical and intellectual evolution. 
As long as the conscious and the unconscious, mental 
phenomena and physical facts, are allowed to meet at a 
point of indifference, removed from all knowledge and 
all conception, this form of philosophy, though in itself 
profoundly unintelligible, will have a certain fanciful co- 
herence and plausibility. Its entire worthlessness for 
purposes of exposition is found in the assumption of un- 
conscious intelligence, terms incongruous through the 
entire circuit of experience. Knowing, in its essential 
force, is thus set aside, and something wholly below it 
put in its place. It is far better to raise all activity into 
the light and coherence of a logical process, than to 
submerge the intellectual life In the flow of physical 
forces. Yet either movement is constantly lapsing into 
the other. We can save thought as thought, causal rela- 
tion as causal relation, only by saving both. The differ- 
entia of one defines that of the other. If we fail to dis- 
criminate the movements of matter and mind, under form- 
elements that are Incapable of confusion, we shall easily 
identify a logical process with a cosmic movement, a cos- 
mic movement with a logical process, and play loosely 
and vaguely between the two. Matter and mind so domi- 
nate all our experience that we can bring no light to it 
from a philosophy which confounds them, a philosophy of 
the unconscious, which has no single fact to light it on its 
way. The two forms of development, in their complete 
separation and constant interaction, must stand in theory 
as they do in fact, in comprehension as they do in obser- 
vation, over against each other, eternally distinct and Irre- 



464 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

solvable terms. A thing must remain in space-relations, 
for only thus is it a thing ; a thought in consciousness, for 
this it is which makes it to be a thought. Form-element 
of being other than these two there is none. Hartmann's 
philosophy, having broken with the first and fundamental 
fact of experience, brings no light to it and derives no 
proof from it. 

PART IV. 

MATERIALISTIC TENDENCIES. 

§ 23. Philosophy is an exposition of things as well as of 
persons. The two are inseparable. Their partnership in 
the universe is the problem we have in hand. Realism 
asserts that physical and spiritual phenomena are to be 
held as each equally and fully valid, under their own order 
as offered in experience. The significance of the universe 
is found in the poise of the two, in their constructive and 
mutually explanatory equilibrium. Materialism disturbs 
this balance by undue weight conceded to material forces ; 
and idealism, by depressing the scale on the side of mind. 

Materialism is slow to accept its last conclusions, and 
most men draw back from it as an unworthy rendering of 
human life. Yet it readily enters as a hasty extension of 
physical processes and causal relations. Evolution, as an 
extreme theory, tends inevitably to materialism. Matter 
is the primitive term by a long antecedent period, and 
from it mind is to be evolved in a secondary descent. 
The powers of mind are much restricted, that they may 
be placed in harmony with their sources. If evolution 
fails to assign mental phenomena a dependent position 
among physical facts, it is rather because speculative 
thought has not courage to complete its work, than 



MATERIALISM. 465 

because this conclusion is not involved in the premises. 
The facts of our spiritual life are so present and persistent 
under their own type, that it calls for no little audacity 
of assertion to degrade them peremptorily from their 
true rank. Such a doctrine as that of liberty firmly holds 
its own in the presence of insufficient proof and sagacious 
disproof. It stands as a barrier set up, in the mind itself, 
to the sweep of causal forces. No matter how often it is 
submerged by them, the least subsidence reveals it in its 
old position. 

A second tendency that works strongly for material- 
istic exposition is the natural desire to carry the forms of 
inquiry which we have found successful in the physical 
world, which have gotten to themselves the prestige of 
science, into intellectual facts. There is a large number 
of phenomena, chiefly of a nervous character, that lie dis- 
tinctly in the physical world, yet are closely associated 
with mental activity. These give occasion for a transfer 
of inquiry from one field to the other without a change of 
method. If, then, we can obliterate the dividing line of 
consciousness, and suppose that essentially the same 
activities are now on one side, now on the other, of this 
variable and secondary boundary, we have made a long 
stride in fusing the two kingdoms. Thus the investigator 
is fairly launched on what he terms the subconscious phe- 
nomena of mind — phenomena that suffer no definite or 
decisive change in becoming conscious — though the mate- 
rial of discussion is wholly physical and under physical 
law. Thus the primordial conditions and dependencies 
of mind are found in the nervous mechanism with which 
it is associated. The mechanism is the germ and the 
law of the power. The universe is to be interpreted from 
below upward. The prior event is the efficient cause and 



466 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

controlling idea. The entire movement of mind is re- 
versed before, in exposition, we reach the mind itself. 

Thus we have a physiological psychology, nervous rela- 
tions being substituted in examination and discussion for 
mental facts. In this inquiry the fundamental distinction 
is forgotten. Yet consciousness is not an accident of 
intellectual activity, it is its essential characteristic, its 
exclusive form-element. The moment we pass this 
bound all things are changed. We were dealing with 
relations in space, and our conclusions, whatever they 
might be, concerned physical events, and not intellectual 
ones. The dividing line between the two lies inexpug- 
nable — subject not to the least shift or variation. The 
instant we enter the region of mental facts, the work of 
observation is wholly of another order. Our old terms 
disappear, and new ones take their place. We may 
establish reciprocal dependencies between the two sets 
of facts, but these do not in the least alter their diversity 
of character. These relations, indeed, owe their signifi- 
cance as expositions to the maintenance of this radical 
difference. Merge the two sets of phenomena, and the 
problem has disappeared. The primitive nature of the 
two forms of phenomena is defined by wholly distinct 
methods of approach, and by form-elements that have 
nothing in common. Our introduction of a third sub- 
conscious territory does not assist us, because we find 
nothing in experience corresponding to it. All our facts 
of observation are definitely those of mind or those of 
matter, facts in consciousness or facts in space. The 
overlap is purely fanciful. This furtive stealing in of 
physical dependencies in the exposition of spiritual phe- 
nomena is a very familiar fact, but has no more justifica- 
tion in sound thought than the reverse movement which 



PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 467 

belonged to the early stages of physical investigation. 
Then we gave mental characteristics to material things ; 
now we assign material connections to intellectual events. 

This diversity of phenomena cannot be overlooked or 
shaken off. Hence the words which the materialist uses 
soon come to acquire a scope which does not belong to 
them. To put will and idea at the root of development is 
a furtive effort to assist mechanical conceptions by a phase 
of power which belongs to mental activity. The constant 
result of both materialism and idealism is the slipping of 
words, first defined for us by actual experience, into a 
wider use, in which they cover both physical and mental 
action indifferently. Our theory slowly destroys the ex- 
plicitness of the language in which we express it, and leads 
to a degeneracy of speech, a loss of previous distinctions, 
and not to any new mastery over them. Our words will 
not long bear the strain the facts put upon them, and so a 
mental designation comes to embrace a physical force, 
and terms which express material dependencies widen 
their scope toward intellectual relations. We have weak- 
ened the nerve of speech, not strengthened that of com- 
prehension. 

§ 24. Idealism was so early, and so predominantly, 
present in Germany as to imply a predisposition of the 
German mind to it. The patient, subtile, remote methods 
of inquiry which have belonged to the Germans find their 
fullest expression in the manifold, obscure, and intricate 
forms of idealism. The national tendency has been 
strengthened by its philosophy, and materialism, in its 
sensuous nearness, its intellectual superficiality and inad- 
equacy, has found but a narrow place in German thought. 
Louis Biichner has best represented it in that crass form 
in which it affiliates most directly with physical science. 



468 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

" Force and Matter," which has been translated Into Eng- 
lish and into other European languages, is simply a bold, 
stubborn perversion of the facts under the prepossessions 
of empirical knowledge. A philosophy that unites itself 
determinedly to science, even though very inadequately, 
draws to itself very powerful interests. 

The direction of inquiry most successful and extended 
in Germany, which approaches philosophy chiefly on the 
physical side, has been that of physiological psychology. 
The subjects of investigation have been the functions of 
different portions of the brain ; the periods occupied by 
various forms of mental action, the conditions which mod- 
ify these times ; the localities, kinds, and degrees of sensi- 
bility in the body ; the abnormal mental phenomena asso- 
ciated with an unduly impressible or a diseased nervous 
system. Much ingenuity and diligent observation have 
been exercised in this class of inquiries, and valuable 
results have been attained. This effort to trace the inter- 
dependence of body and mind lies in the direction of 
sound thought, gives facts of much interest in themselves, 
and may indirectly bring light to psychology as well as 
receive light from it. These investigations are not neces- 
sarily materialistic in their tendency, and only become so 
when they are regarded as, in any way, a part of psy- 
chology, or a clew to philosophy. If both elements are 
fr-<iely '^recognized in these physical runways of thought, 
if both are handled under their own empirical forms and 
terms, there is no more necessity of, or fitness in, con- 
founding intellectual processes with their conditions than 
there would be in identifying the artist with his tools. 
Psychology, in its intellectual completeness, must precede 
all such investigations. They are incapable of giving a 
single fact in consciousness, or doing anything more than 



PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 469 

tracing the physical conditions which accompany given 
forms of mental activity, either as an occasion or as an 
expression. 

One may be tempted to underestimate the value of 
the facts elicited by physiological jzfsychology because 
of the undue position assigned them by a few. Nothing 
can well be more lumpish, unleavened bread-food for 
the spirit than physiological psychology, made to take the 
place of psychology. Yet, its own limitation freely ac- 
cepted, this inquiry may not only yield interesting results, 
but scatter light on both worlds. 

It has been found impossible to introduce mathemat- 
ics successfully into psychology. In the exact sciences, 
mathematics are a leading condition of the growth of 
knowledge. Notwithstanding a variety of efforts, no unit 
of measurement has been established within the domain 
of mind. Not only are the periods of any given mental 
action variable, they are an expression, not of anything 
in the nature of the act, but of the nature of the nervous 
connections involved in its utterance. The measure- 
ment holds on the physical, not on the spiritual, side of 
the activity under discussion. It expresses the perform- 
ance of the engine, not of the engineer. Mental phenom- 
ena are more or less discontinuous, do not return in iden- 
tically the same form and force, and, by the very nature 
of their being, exclude, in the consciousness of a single 
person, any permanent second term with which they can 
be compared. The true spontaneity of mind is strongly 
indicated by this very fact, that no experience is explicit 
and final and recoverable enough to be laid alongside 
other mental phenomena as a term of measurement. There 
is no such uniformity in mental activities as to admit of a 
universal expression. All is free, personal, variable. 



470 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

Gustav Theodor Fechner, following in the steps of 
Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795), laid down the law, Stimuli 
whose intensities form a geometric ratio call out sensa- 
tions whose intensities are in arithmetical ratio. This 
law expresses a general relation, but one which cannot be 
applied with precision. The limit within which it proxi- 
mately holds is a narrow one. The nervous system main- 
tains its tone, and responds promptly, only under moderate 
stimuli, stimuli that lie in the ordinary range of its func- 
tion. If these limits are exceeded, its action is corre- 
spondingly deranged. If we accept the law in a loose 
form, it expresses the facts. Successive excitations, dis- 
tinctly noted, may be feebler, if added to slight excitations ; 
must be more intense, if added to strong excitations. This 
means that the intensity of sensation does not keep pace 
with the intensity of stimulus. This again signifies that 
the nervous system, as a means of transmitted impressions, 
is rapidly exhausted by use. It comes markedly under 
the variability of vital forces. Of the two terms in this 
comparison, stimuli and sensations, one is physical and one 
is mental ; one is measured by external tests, the other by 
internal impressions ; the one is cause and the other effect. 
But as the nervous system intervenes between the cause 
and effect, the dependence of the two is modified by the 
very changeable character of nervous activity. Subtile 
and obscure diflerences enter into our measurements and 
distinguish them at once from a simply mechanical esti- 
mate. The second term, the impression, is the only unit 
Avhich has any claim to be called intellectual. This is 
defined by the first sensation, or the least increment of 
sensation, of which the mind is conscious. This unit 
shares all the vagueness of dimension which belongs to 
consciousness, cannot be carried beyond the individual 



FECHNER. 471 

experience, nor be used within it to determine, by any- 
direct comparison, the volume of mental states. This 
unit varies according to the intensity of the action of 
stimuli. The mind does not, probably owing to the ready 
exhaustion of nervous energy, respond uniformly to the 
conditions of activity, the vigor of the forces which assail 
it, but, beyond a familiar range, soon finds itself lost in 
confusion. The nature of the dependence of the mind on 
its material organs is thus determined, but its own proc- 
esses disclose no definite dimensions. It is not possible 
to say that each distinct increment of sensation, in an 
experience of growing intensity, is equal to every other; 
nor to lay hold of any one of them as a unit of measure- 
ment in mental states. The law that Hamilton states: 
Perception is in inverse ratio to sensation : draws attention 
to the fact that mental states tend to exclude each other, 
but does not reduce that fact to an exact and verifiable 
expression. So vital an organ is the brain that it does 
not, in its infinite variability, readily subject its action to 
any certain measurement, and the mind, in its freedom, 
makes one or another use of cerebral conditions according 
to its own inner promptings. The mind is not unfre- 
quently.so preoccupied as to anticipate the force of 
stimuli that would otherwise result in distinct or even 
intense sensations. Stimuli are conditioned not only by 
the immediate state of the nervous system, but by the 
form of the intellectual activity they are approaching. 

Another class of measurements pursued extendedly by 
Weber is the determination of the discriminating power 
of organs of sense, in reference to position. Different 
portions of the body are very differently endowed with 
sensation. The inquiry is almost purely a physiological 
one, as much so as the difficult investigation of the pri- 



472 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

mary functions of each part of the brain. The duration 
of psychic acts has recently received much attention. 
Wilhelm Wundt has especially prosecuted this class of 
inquiries in Germany. The transmission of impressions 
through the nervous system involves the period of a pure 
mental act in consciousness, connecting a sensor with a 
motor act. Having defined the time required for sensa- 
tion and action, we can vary the intellectual activity by 
which the transition is effected, and so settle the period 
of each form. Much ingenuity has been exercised in 
determining these times. We should be careful neither 
to disparage nor to overestimate the results. They are 
interesting in themselves, and have some practical value. 
Their bearing on psychology is indirect and remote. No 
data in consciousness are declared by them ; these are all 
assumed preparatory to them. Neither do they touch 
the nature of the dependence of one mental state on 
another. The time, as one-seventh or one-fifth of a 
second, consumed in the completion of a reflex act, 
stands simply for the nervous conditions under which 
the mind is united to the external world. The period 
varies with the organism, and with its condition, and with 
the state of mind. 

Our estimate of the value of these determinations will 
depend very much on our psychology. If nervous activ- 
ities are regarded as the ruling causes of intellectual phe- 
nomena, and not simply as the instruments of their ex- 
pression, Ave shall seem to penetrate somewhat deeply 
into the nature of intellectual activity by these measure- 
ments, though the impossibility of drawing any real 
psychological conclusions from our data will still remain. 
If, however, we regard intellectual activity as prior, in 
determination, to the cerebral action which accompanies 



MEASUREMENTS. 473 

it, and only conditioned in time by this neural depend- 
ence, then our results will be felt not to touch, in any 
direct way, the problem of spiritual powers. Our study 
becomes psychological physiology, rather than physio- 
logical psychology. We are simply using our previous 
knowledge of mental activities to direct our inquiries 
into the nervous system, as an instrument of the mind. 

Eduard Zeller, the historian of philosophy, holds that 
these measurements are not measurements of psychical 
states, and give us no unit within the mind itself. Take 
the most favorable case, that of sensation, and the least in- 
crement of sensation open to consciousness as affording a 
distinct unit ; what is it that is measured ? With what 
form of masj-nitudes are we dealincr? Our unit is not one 
of time, the time measures simply the neural movement. 
It is not one of intensity. We have no expression or test 
of this intensity, other than that of the force of the sen- 
suous stimuli present in the case: and, as we have seen, 
the inner state does not respond directly, or with any 
fixed relation, to these stimuli. Our results are general 
and variable. We have not secured an absolute ratio, even 
in the relation of exact physical facts to psychical expe- 
riences. The unit is determinate only on the physical 
side of stimuli, not on the intellectual side of sensation. 
The minimum sensation is not a measure, and may not, 
in different experiences, or even in the same experience, 
be identical with itself. We know neither how to double 
it nor divide it, nor how to lay it alongside of any other 
experience. The external stimuli, which alone admit of 
anything like measurement, are variable in reference to it. 
The least sensation has no parts. Prior to its presence 
there is no sensation, though there are unsatisfied stimuli. 
The least sensation has no dimension within itself, and 



474 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

can be made to disclose no dimensions in other mental 
states. Our mathematics have not passed beyond phys- 
ical dependencies. We are still, so far as mind is con- 
cerned, in a region of figurative and intangible estimates. 
The mechanism of the brain carries its own definite con- 
nections with it, so far as these can be traced ; but when 
we touch the farther shore, other impressions and rela- 
tions, manageable in a totally different manner, are pres- 
ent to us. The elasticity of spiritual phenomena, re- 
sponding to the meditative purposes of mind, shrinking 
here and enlarging there, according to the occasions and 
directions and intensities of thought, takes the place of 
determinate causal movement, and eludes all other rela- 
tions save those which consciousness discloses. 

Herbart, regarding himself as a realist, discussed the 
phenomena of mind under conceptions so purely physical 
as to stand in affiliation with the materialistic tendency. 

§ 25. Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776), whose life cov- 
ered very nearly the same period as that of Hegel, was, 
next to Hegel, the most influential teacher of philosophy 
of his time. He was a pupil of Fichte, and a professor 
at Konigsberg in place of Krug, who was the successor 
of Kant. Later he was professor at Gottingen. He 
styled himself a realist, and his disciples esteemed his 
philosophy peculiarly tangible and exact. His critical 
penetration put him among influential thinkers. He 
regarded philosophy as pertaining to the perfection of 
conceptions. Clearness of conceptions, with the judg- 
ments that follow from it, is the theme of logic. A por- 
tion of our conceptions are inconsistent with each other. 
The harmonizing of these conceptions is the purpose of 
metaphysics. There are also conceptions which appeal 
to us simply for assent or dissent. These conceptions 



HERBART. 475 

give us aesthetics. He regarded ethical impressions as 
the highest form of aestheticalr ones. They are judgments 
of taste which pertain to the will. Herbart found, in a 
contemplation of nature, and still more in ethics, an occa- 
sion for religious faith. 

Among the contradictory conceptions that call for the 
reconciliation of philosophy are those which pertain to 
space and time. We can subdivide neither space nor 
time so as to reach an ultimate. If we undertake to 
attain an ultimate part in matter, we are lost in the con- 
fusion of infinitesimals. Neither can we in events grasp 
the successive changes of which they are made up. What 
is continuous in time drops, in conception, into successive 
parts without union. 

This incongruity of Herbart is the old riddle of infinite 
divisibility, and arises from making that discontinuous, 
by virtue of successive steps of conception, which is con- 
tinuous in fact. We cannot grasp the same thing at 
the same time in analytic parts and as one uniform pro- 
cedure. 

Another inconsistent conception is that of a thing with 
several attributes. The variety in the attributes implies 
equal variety in the thing. We cannot, therefore, put 
back of complex qualities simple substances. The notion 
of causation also involves contradictions. Changes must 
arise either from without or from within, or be without a 
cause. If the change arises from without, we are borne 
backward in hopeless recession in search of a first cause. 
Moreover, such a change implies that the agent works by 
something not included in it. If the change arises from 
within, the thing is divided against itself into two opposed 
tendencies, active and passive. If we make change to be 
the very nature of the object, these changes will either 



476 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

be causeless, incoherent, without unity, or we must unite 
them in that which does not expound them. 

Herbart also regarded the conception of the ego as ir- 
reconcilable with itself. It is the union of manifold phe- 
nomena, and is, at the same time, thought of as simple. 
Moreover, the ego must understand itself by one of its 
own acts. It must think, and must, in a second act, refer 
that thought to itself, and so is always left at one remove 
from itself. 

In order to free ourselves from the contradiction of 
various attributes in the same thing, and the farther con- 
tradiction of changes in things, we must accept the notion 
of simple, ultimate essences which intrude on each other, 
and which take on, in reference to each other, acts of 
self-preservation. Herein Herbart returns to ultimates, 
playing the same part as the monads of Leibnitz. Phe- 
nomena arise in their complexity and changeability from 
the interpenetrability of these ultimate, simple essences, 
and from their reciprocal modification by each other, 
according to their likeness or unlikeness. 

Thus the soul is a single, spaceless essence, located at 
a definite point in the brain. In sensation, the soul is 
permeated by the simple essences about it, and its acts 
of self-preservation are ideas, the impressions of conscious- 
ness. These ideas, in blending with each other and by 
displacement of each other, give us the phenomena of 
mind. Ideas that are opposed to each other arrest each 
other with a reduction of intensity, which may result in 
the exclusion of an idea from consciousness. The '' sum 
of arrests " determines the states of mind. The facts of 
psychology are facts of equilibrium. Freedom is an equi- 
librium between the will and the moral judgment. The 
intensity of ideas admits of mathematical expression. In 



HERBART. 477 

this effort Herbart introduced the symbols of algebra, 
though he was able to secure no unit of measurement. 
His equations were as much afloat on vague and figurative 
conceptions as are the words of ordinary speech. 

Herbart regarded the forms of experience as given us, 
not as subjective. If they were subjective, we should be 
able to put any form on any experience ; whereas experi- 
ence resists every form save the one peculiar to it. It 
thereby shows its own power to determine our perception. 
These determinative elements are valid for all intelligence, 
though we cannot affirm them of things-in-themselves. 

§ 26. The entire mechanism of Herbart is open to the 
most destructive criticism. It is an effort to expound 
phenomenally that which is not phenomenal. We can 
observe and analyze the states of mind, and follow their 
order of dependence, but we cannot put back of them, 
with any power of exposition, another set of phenomena, 
to wit, the exclusion of essences by each other. These 
essences and their modes of operation are wholly hypo- 
thetical, beyond all verification. In assigning them the 
work of causes, we are dealing with what is entirely un- 
known. A theory that adds the unknown to the unknown 
brings us no nearer knowledge. Nor can we, granting 
these essences and their displacements, secure, by means 
of them, any insight into the facts of mind. These 
essences and their interpenetrations are very vaguely con- 
ceived by us under physical images, and the translation 
of these images into intellectual experiences and laws is 
wholly unintelligible, a by-play of fancy. Why an effort 
of self-preservation, in a simple essence, should be the 
occasion of a self-conscious state is as obscure as any 
proposition can be. We understand the words, but not 
in the least that which they indicate. 



478 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

It is only a minor criticism, when we consider this com- 
plete failure of the theory to expound anything, that it 
involves contradictory terms. A spaceless essence admits 
of no position or interpenetration. The conception rests 
on the fiction of a point without dimensions and the pas- 
sage of points into each other. These theories consume 
time and thought to no purpose, attach themselves in no 
way to our knowledge of the actual, weave fancies together 
in so vague a manner as to admit readily neither proof 
nor disproof, and weary the mind with intangible results, 
till it is ready to discard with disgust all speculation. 
Our very notion of the nature of knowledge is disordered. 
We flee to agnosticism from inquiries which spring out of 
nothing and lead to nothing. 

The philosophy of Herbart is especially faulty in ex- 
pounding the spiritual by the physical in such a way as 
to confuse the very notion of spirit. The soul is held 
to be simple — with a physical simplicity — because, if it 
were complex, essences, ideas, would be outside of each 
other, and we should lose the unity of thought and the 
unity of consciousness. This unity is to be interpreted 
under the notion of absolute oneness of physical being. 

In one respect the psychology of Herbart may have 
been helpful. It set aside the notion of a combination 
of faculties in the mind, and drew attention to its essen- 
tial unity. The interdependence of ideas was traced and 
referred to a closely coherent movement. Yet here, there 
was a loss of true personality, the instant initiation of 
spiritual life within itself. An inferior and mechanical 
activity was put for a superior and intellectual one. The 
realism of Herbart inclined decidedly toward materialism 
by drawing its germinant idea from the relation of essences 
to each other — essences essentially physical in their char- 



HERBART. 479 

acteristics and causal in their dependencies. The two 
kingdoms are hopelessly intermingled and confused by- 
expounding phenomena that lie on one side of the bound- 
ary line by notions derived from the opposite side. 

Nor are the reasonings of Herbart, under the notion of 
causation, sufficiently guarded and corrected by observa- 
tion. We cannot cease to assert the relation of cause 
and effect, and must adhere to it as our constant and 
only clew to physical facts. If this fails us, knowledge 
fails us also. Yet we have occasion for the utmost em- 
pirical caution in expounding intellectual relations under 
it. Herbart, by his doctrine of simplicity of attributes 
and so of essences, strove to carry conclusions, resting 
on the idea of causation, into a transcendental region. 
Essences are conceived as absolutely simple, giving rise 
to equally simple effects. These essences interpenetrate 
each other, and so give occasion to complex phenomena. 
But if essences offer themselves to us under many forms 
of manifestations, may not their original structure involve 
complexity? We cannot affirm that simplicity, in the 
sense of absolute singleness of action, is any more intel- 
ligible to us, or a more fitting primitive term, than the 
union, in one element, of diverse forces. An interlacing 
of qualities may as well belong to the original constitution 
of things as to an acquired constitution. It is as appre- 
hensible in the one case as in the other. It is a familiar 
fact of experience, and we have no such insight into the 
nature of things as to discover any constructive or logical 
incongruity in the variety of qualities under which a 
single object expresses itself in diverse relations. The 
notion of absolute oneness is fanciful. 

That any well-ordered and harmoniously related phe- 
nomena should follow from the resistance which simple 



48o THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

essences offer to interpenetration is a conception, on the 
other hand, as difficult to be entertained as any we can 
readily offer. We have no such knowledge of the nature 
of forces — indeed, we have no knowledge of them save in 
that very experience in which they appear under complex 
forms, — or of their tendency to exclude or include one 
another, as to get any hold for a priori inferences. The 
changeable interaction of elements — groups of forces — 
the effect of objects remote from each other on each 
other, the extended interlock of relations, must be ac- 
cepted by us as facts wholly in accord with the law of 
causation. They gain nothing in comprehension by a 
gratuitous and complicated mechanism of essences, a 
mechanism which is, after all, nothing more than a crude 
product of our crudest experience, that in which solid 
bodies exclude each other or liquid ones entertain each 
other. While we may be sure that no physical event is 
without a cause, the nature and action of that cause are 
questions of observation. If we go on to assume what 
may seem to us more simple and primitive methods, we 
shall lose the path of knowledge altogether. The exact 
office of things is to steady and guide thoughts in this 
otherwise waste territory. 

It is especially inept to try to expound the simplicity 
of mind by the simplicity of an essence. The simplicity 
of a thing is totally distinct from the simplicity of the 
spirit. We may mistakenly, in search of unity, reduce the 
attributes of an object to one, and crowd this object, with 
its single attribute, into what we are pleased to term a 
point ; but we have not thereby attained any expression 
of real unity, real union, in things, much less in thoughts. 
That conjunction which we term mind involves the coher- 
ence of many diverse phenomena in one movement con- 



HERB ART. 48 1 

current throughout with itself, its energies all subserving 
a single purpose. Mind is what it is by no one of its acts, 
but by virtue of a superconscious presence knitting them 
all in one life. Herbart introduces conflict into personal 
powers by mistaking the nature of unity. The mind acts, 
and by a second act refers its experiences to itself. It 
does not thereby separate itself from itself, and fall into 
parts. It renders its own union to itself as a constant 
fact. The succession of thoughts, of phenomenal states, 
by which this insight is rendered in judgments, in no 
way alters the unity itself. Indeed, this is the gist of 
spiritual unity, the presence of one impelling power in 
many actions. True unity is found in the mind alone, 
must be apprehended there, and lies in the constant inter- 
lock of mental states by which they arise in the fulfil- 
ment of a single, coherent life. Unity is solely an 
intellectual relation, and involves diversity as certainly as 
concurrence. There is no occasion for the notion till 
mental phenomena have arisen in their variety. It is in 
subversion of all psychology to expect the mind to know 
itself directly-, to make its own being an object of con- 
templation. The mind would thus become phenomenal, 
would lose its pure spiritual being as noumenon, would 
disclose effects, facts, other than its own acts. It is an 
illusion of the senses that leads us to wish to know, to 
see, the mind otherwise than in and by its presentation in 
thought and feeling. 

A doctrine of essences carries us at once into a region 
of moonshine, where the notion of causation yields but a 
shimmering and uncertain light, and experience — above 
which we are striving in vain to set ourselves — corrects 
inadequately our inevitable errors. One of the worst 
results of a philosophy of this order is the sinking of 
31 



482 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

knowledge into hopeless relativity. If a simple essence, 
the soul, is interpenetrated by other essences ; if our im- 
pressions are due to the sum of arrests, what scope or 
revealing power can belong to our convictions, what sig- 
nificancy have they beyond other phenomena arising at 
other atomic centres ? Knowing, that it may be knowing 
and not simply being, must have the range of the uni- 
verse, and not be limited to the accidents of an infinites- 
imal part of it. Such a philosophy must begin at once 
either to reduce knowledge to a phosphorescent light at 
detached points, or it must struggle to give these hope- 
lessly obscure and narrow experiences a breadth of repre- 
sentation that in no way belongs to them. 

Herbart strove to give a mathematical expression to 
the fusion of different mental states and to the arrests 
between them. As, however, he had no reliable unit, no 
empirical basis from which to start and to which to re- 
turn, his equations gained no footing, and subserved no 
purpose. They were only another portion of the general 
illusion, another method of disclosing its inadequacy. 
The failure of mathematics, when wrongly applied, is only 
the more conspicuous because of the precision which prop- 
erly belongs to it. The measurements of Wundt express 
real, though not mental, relations ; those of Herbart are 
as fanciful as the suppositions on which they rest. 

We find in Herbart another example of the unfortunate 
results traceable to that very unphilosophical conception 
of Kant, things-in-themselves. These things-in-themselves 
are now offered as essences. An essence is something 
endowed with an original, simple nature of its own ; and 
these essences begin to act on each other in produc- 
tion of physical and mental phenomena. Thus the sim- 
plicity of the world, as interpreted by reason, is lost. 



IDEALISM. 483 

Phenomena no longer imply noumena, inner reality, cau- 
sal energy ; noumena are no longer fully and finally ex- 
pressed in phenomena. We have first a world of essences 
and then a world of thi-ngs derived from them. The 
essences are wholly unintelligible both to sense and to un- 
derstanding, nor can we render, in any terms of experience, 
the translation by which they pass into the facts of the 
world. Our real knowledge does not begin till we get 
back again to things, and study them in the old, unphilo- 
sophical way. 

PART V. 

REALISM IN GERMANY. 

§ 27. Idealism is a bold and fascinating form of specu- 
lation. It loosens extendedly all the customary restraints 
of thought. It has been a thoroughly dominant type of 
philosophy in Germany, and has been productive of free, 
changeable, and facile theories, as regardless of each other 
as of any and all sober tests of truth. Philosophy has 
thus been rash and wayward, not patient and accumula- 
tive. Successive systems, taking their departure from 
previous ones, have not returned to them to correct their 
own wanderings, or to collate themselves with them. 
Diversity has been more conspicuous than agreement, 
originality than the light of converging lines of thought. 
Realism, lying close to the ordinary convictions of men, 
has suffered the eclipse of dulness — something too near 
to be seen. 

The best result of idealism has been that it has magni- 
fied spiritual power, and held in check the mole-eyed 
forms of materialism. The mind has not submitted its 



484 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

freedom to the domination of sensuous impressions. 
This sense of integrity within the mind itself is much to 
be preferred to that self-abandonment by which its own 
rational powers are made nugatory in the very process of 
exposition. Better not render the world than not to 
render it deeply, under wisdom's own terms. 

The first condition of sound philosophy is faith in men- 
tal powers and processes. We must accept the instru- 
ments of the mind as already fully involved in it. Correc- 
tion cannot be with us overthrow. Primary ideas must 
stand as laws of mind and laws of knowledge. We may 
uncover and strengthen the foundations of truth, we can- 
not alter them. While idealism fails to recognize the full 
force of first terms, it never, in its most wayward specula- 
tion, loses confidence in the rational process. 

The second condition of sound philosophy is a firm 
hold on the facts, the empirical facts, which call for 
explanation and guide it. Here it is that idealism fatally 
stumbles. Its expositions are more remote, more unin- 
telligible, than the facts which call them out. The ques- 
tions gain nothing from the answer, the phenomena 
from the theories which are united to them. The world 
of speculations is one world, and the world of realities is 
another, while the transition is rare and difficult. Real- 
ism owes its sobriety of results to a quiet acceptance of 
facts in the forms in which the ample light of experience 
has declared them. It thus starts from the haunts of 
thought, works in familiar ways on familiar objects, with 
the modest hope of deeper insight into relations ad- 
mitted by all. It does not, in expounding the events of 
life, destroy their recognized character, or leave the con- 
nections of thing and theory purely verbal. 

The works of Kant were so influential, and the idealism 



JACOBI. 485 

involved in them so inevitable, that many were swept at 
once from the footing of realism. Those who retained 
its principles were unable to check the new tendency, or 
resist the prestige which attached to it. They were left 
stranded among out-worn opinions, while the current 
swept on. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743) rejected the 
doctrine of Kant, that regulative ideas are simply sub- 
jective form elements, the source of impressions which 
have no necessary agreement with things-in-themselves. 
He held that the mind has an immediate apprehension 
of supersensible relations, preeminently of the true, the 
beautiful, and the good. He carried this belief to the 
extent of affirming a direct knowledge of God. His phil- 
osophical conclusions rested on faith, and were fitted to 
sustain faith. Realism unites itself so readily to relig- 
ion, that it sometimes suffers both in fact, and in the 
estimates of men, from this too facile union. Jacobi felt 
that his explanations did not reach as deep as his beliefs; 
that he was '^ a heathen with the understanding, but a 
Christian with the spirit.'* This attitude is not incon- 
sistent with a sound philosophical method, when the 
rational force of a faith is felt which the mind has not 
yet mastered in its speculative bearings. In a conflict of 
impressions, lower and higher, sensuous and spiritual, we 
may well hold fast to the higher, waiting a final solution. 
It is the presence of the deeper sentiment that springs 
the problem, and we may rightly believe that its true 
solution will find germinant light at this very point of in- 
quiry. Jacobi affirmed unhesitatingly the primary truths 
of faith, though not able wholly to divest them of the ob- 
scurity put upon them by the scepticism of Hume, and the 
transcendentalism — itself a kind of scepticism — of Kant. 
§ 28. The name of most mark in the record of realism 



486 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

and of rational faith was that of Friedrich Ernest Daniel 
Schleiermacher (1768). He was the son of a clergyman 
of the Moravian Brethren, and became professor of theol- 
ogy, first in Halle, and later in the University of Berlin. 
He studied the doctrines of Spinoza under Jacobi, who 
regarded them as the most self-consistent of speculative 
systems. He also came under the influence of Plato, 
and of Fichte and Schelling. As a preacher and pro- 
fessor, his activity and influence were very extended. 
Zeller says of him that he was the greatest theologian of 
the Protestant church since the days of Luther. He was 
a man of wide powers, penetrating insight, and deep con- 
victions. He was equally able to move the heart and the 
understanding. He favored the union of the Lutheran 
church and Reformed churches, and carried into philos- 
ophy and religion a true inspiration. Without devoting 
himself to any one system, he laid hold freely of the most 
pregnant forms of spiritual truth. 

Schleiermacher held, in even balance, the two impulses 
which sustain sound realism, the scientific temper, and 
religious insight. He deemed the earnest want of his own 
time — which remains the want of our time — to be " An 
eternal compact between vital Christian faith, on the one 
hand, and scientific inquiry, left free to labor indepen- 
dently for itself, on the other." 

Schleiermacher referred the material of knowledge to 
perception, or the organic function, and the forms of 
knowledge to reason, or the intellectual function. The 
forms of knowledge are not merely subjective. They 
pertain to the objects of knowledge, and stand for real 
relations. We thus have both parts of realism, the power 
to know and the correspondence of things to our knowl- 
edge of them. Truth is the agreement of our convictions 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 487 

with the relations to which they pertain. Schleiermacher 
regarded science as conditioned on the conformity of 
things to reason, their existence in reason ; art as the 
transfer of reason to things, the existence of reason in 
things ; and religion as the consciousness of the essential 
and universal unity of nature and reason. We are relig- 
ious in the degree in which we can accept every separate 
object as a part of one whole, in the measure in which we 
can find ourselves, in insight and feeling, at one with the 
Eternal. Science and religion are both possible only be- 
cause all things are held in solution by reason. Science 
groups intellectual relations and leads on to religion. 
Religion expresses the higher feelings which are called 
out by the Infinite, contained in the finite and perishable. 
God is neither identical with, nor separated from, the 
world. By virtue of our rational insight, the world puts 
us in unity with God. Philosophy and religion are legit- 
imate and concurrent activities of mind. 

The end of ethical activity is the highest good. It 
aims at the union of nature and reason in all ways. The 
various virtues are the methods by which reason, as an 
energy, expresses itself in human action. 

There was abundant material for spiritual enthusiasm 
in the realism of Schleiermacher. Secondary conflicts in 
the relation of things to pure thought, in the world as a 
fact and as an ideal product of divine wisdom, disap- 
peared. The obscurities of subtile speculation were 
swallowed up in the light of faith, the light that runs 
before insight. An overpowering sense of motion, of 
growth singly and collectively into the divine mind, swept 
away distrust and fear, and carried the spirit buoyantly 
forward toward its true goal. 

§ 29. The philosopher whom we must place next in our 



488 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

list of realists was one of a much tamer mood. Friedrich 
Eduard Beneke (1798) came early under the influence 
both of Jacobi and Schleiermachen Later he gave much 
attention to the works of Herbart. His thinking was dis- 
tinctly modified by them, though often by way of dissent. 
His philosophy is most readily approached when regarded 
in contrast with that of Herbart. The lectures of Beneke 
at the University of Berlin were interdicted, as he thought, 
at the instigation of Hegel. He retired to Gottingen, and 
later returned to Berlin, where he at length received an 
appointment to an irregular professorship. 

Beneke was fully possessed of some of the most funda- 
mental convictions of realism. He regarded the phenom- 
ena of consciousness, clearly distinguished from those 
of space, as constituting the facts of psychology. They 
are to be sought out, like other facts, by observation, and 
to be combined by induction. The boundaries, therefore, 
which he assigned to mental science were of the most dis- 
tinct character. The spirit stands in no spatial relations. 
In our inner experience, we apprehend the objects of 
knowledge directly; in our outer experience, indirectly, 
through their effects. We know within ourselves the rela- 
tions of substance, cause and effect, and by means of them 
construct the external world. He regarded psychology 
as the basis of metaphysics. The nature, forms, and limits 
of knowledge are determined by the powers of the mind. 

The soundest philosophy is often the result of diverse 
tendencies, each held in check by the other. Especially 
does realism involve the rendering of relatively equal 
weight to inner and outer facts. Beneke added to his 
affirmation of the primitive character of mental phenom- 
ena a development of mental powers which, fully traced, 
would have led to empiricism. He pursues this unfolding 



BENEKE. 489 

on the intellectual side, but under images that gain fitness 
and clearness in connection only with the nervous system. 
His most distinctive tenet was his denial, with Herbart, 
of faculties of mind, each acting as a separate power. He 
assigned to the mind, in opposition to Herbart, many 
closely united methods of action. These are farther 
specialized and combined in use. Later stages of growth 
are dependent on the grouping of activities in earlier ones. 
Beneke highly commended the unity which Herbart had 
attributed to the mind, though he found it consistent 
Avith various forms of action. He was equally hearty in 
approving the opposition of Locke to innate ideas. The 
furniture of the mind is not ready-made. The mind is to 
be understood in the genetic rise of its several processes. 
The philosophy of Beneke was like and unlike empiricism 
in this particular. It was like it in the importance attached 
to development ; it was unlike it in tracing this develop- 
ment on the intellectual side. 

He laid down four fundamental processes, which pass 
into each other. The first process is that of sensation, in 
its most general form. Impression from without and the 
power of response from within are the first germinal facts 
in mental development. All later processes are the re- 
sult of this mobile, progressive flow of sensations. The 
earlier processes, involved in impressions, become more 
ample, more complex, and fall into groups. These gain 
power by repetition and attention, and so issue in the 
more distinct and complete forms of perception. Con- 
cepts arise by the coalescence of common terms present 
in the perception of individual objects. Judgments are 
the results of the union of more general with less general 
concepts. Mental processes are formed by the affiliation 
of activities directed toward the same objects. 



490 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

The third fundamental process is the result of the rela- 
tion of unconscious to conscious activity. States of mind 
persist. They leave '' traces " behind them which have, 
in reference to subsequent states, the force of " rudi- 
ments." The relation of unconscious states to conscious 
ones, and the government exercised by the former over 
the latter, are seen in memory. 

The fourth fundamental process is that of association. 
Similar activities attract each other, modify and strength- 
en each other. The soul, according to Beneke, is a 
wholly immaterial form of being, endowed with closely 
united forces which, called out by the external world, 
fall into groups in their later unfolding, and gain poAver 
according to their affiliations. It is more difficult to put 
this scheme of thought clearly under intellectual relations 
than it is under neural dependencies. The images and 
analogies which sustain it are physical, and it retains co- 
herence only as we refer its successive stages to the cere- 
bral interactions which sustain them. Beneke labored 
under the difficulty of holding fast pure, psychological 
principles, and of presenting them under conceptions not 
wholly consonant with them. The value of his work lies 
not so much in the success of his own theory as in the 
clear recognition of the fact that mental activity is neces- 
sarily modified in its exercise, and so has a history of 
development allied to growth. 

The ethics'of Beneke discloses, with equal distinctness, 
an empirical predilection. The pleasure which attaches 
to action constitutes its underlying impulse. Ethical 
judgments hold between objects and efforts according to 
their worth, defined in terms of happiness. Here, there 
enters an element of a higher order. Our faculties have 
not the same value, and so the pleasures they confer are 



LOTZE. 491 

not possessed of the same worth. The worth of pleasures 
is to be estimated by their relation to psychical develop- 
ment. As the powers of men are essentially the same, 
they have common conditions of moral judgment. Their 
choices are accompanied by a sense of duty, which is jus- 
tified, in the authority which attaches to it, by belonging 
to the inmost constitution of the soul. The realism of 
Beneke, while sustained by firm affirmation, lost consist- 
ency by a variety of subtile, empirical influences. There 
was a constant leaning toward a mechanical exposition 
of spiritual things. Pure, intellectual power was not 
easily entertained in its full scope. 

§ 30. The German philosopher who, on the whole, has 
represented realism in its fullest and best form was 
Rudolph Hermann Lotze (18 17). He was professor at 
Gottingen, entering on his work in 1844. Herbart, who 
had been transferred from Konigsberg to Gottingen, had 
died in 1841. Lotze thus followed in close connection 
with him. This led to his being regarded as a disciple 
of Herbart, and became the occasion of a distinct denial 
on his part. 

Lotze had this in common with Herbart : they both 
attached much value to the conception of monads pre- 
sented by Leibnitz, though these, as ultimate terms, bore 
no such part in the scheme of Lotze as in that of Her- 
bart. The monads of Leibnitz are too far removed from 
experience to gain any interpretation from it, or to bring 
any interpretation to it. The '^ punctual simplicity " of 
the soul, which was made the basis of psychology by Her- 
bart, is a fanciful notion which we can only handle in a 
fugitive way. It can tell us nothing of the powers of the 
mind. The doctrine of monads involves an unintelligible 
term between physical and spiritual phenomena, and is 



492 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

true to neither. Held as a possible basis of monism, it is 
too speculative to be very harmful, but when this notion 
is made the starting-point of a theory of mind, it confuses 
everything, landing us in idle conjectures. 

Lotze accepted, in common with a large portion of 
German philosophy, the subjective character of space 
and time relations. The anchoring force of physical phe- 
nomena in a common experience, their unmistakable per- 
manence and guiding power in knowledge, were thus lost 
to him. But even this distinctive term of idealism did 
not overcome the strong realistic elements in his system. 
He was characterized by a very happy combination of 
tendencies ordinarily in conflict. He united close, em- 
pirical inquiry with a profound spiritual temper. His 
earlier work was especially in line with that of Weber 
and Fechner. He was committed, in the public mind, to 
the school of physiological psychology. The fact, also, 
that he rejected, with much decision, the idealism of 
Schelling and Hegel, strengthened this feeling concerning 
him. Yet this affiliation, after all, was comparatively 
slight. He laid great stress on mechanism, using the 
term broadly, in the physical world. All organic proc- 
esses are capable of mechanical explanation, come fully 
under the play of physical forces. Life is not to be ac- 
cepted as a distinct force. Over against this conception 
of the perfect mechanism of the body, every part playing 
into every other under fixed physical laws, he puts vital 
energy, not as a single force among other forces, but as 
the sum of the effects of special forces, acting under given 
conditions. Life thus becomes a combining, spiritual 
power, the energy of a constructive purpose. 

Lotze also strengthened the practical side of philosophy 
by an inquiry into the variable forms of sensation, its 



LOTZE. 493 

"local signs," by which the mind is aided in the construc- 
tion of space-relations. Those relations are associated 
in sensation with the discrimination of differences, and 
these differences, in turn, guide the mind in its construc- 
tions. Its constructions arise empirically, and not simply 
as the fruit of insight. 

Lotze was admirably equipped in two correlative forms 
of inquiry. He was predisposed to a thorough investiga- 
tion of things, while he also keenly felt those more spirit- 
ual dependencies which make the physical so profoundly 
significant. It was an inclination toward poetry and art 
which first prompted his study of philosophy. He felt 
that the true explanation of the world demanded, on the 
one hand, the complete recognition of its dependencies 
under physical laws, and, on the other, a recognition of its 
universal ground or occasion in the Idea of the Good. 
True science must answer the three questions, By what 
law ? Through what means ? To what end ? " The world 
of worths is the key of the world of forms." 

This conception of the world is thoroughly realistic, 
though it is worked out by Lotze, in part, under idealistic 
notions. We must, he thought, assume, as our starting- 
point, our material and our psychical existence as coordi- 
nate facts. The distinction between body and spirit must 
be sharply drawn as primary in experience. Whatever 
union we may later show between them must grow out 
of this first diversity of knowledge. 

Lotze held with Herbart that the problem of philos- 
ophy is the effort to bring unity and harmony into our 
conceptions, to combine them in one consistent view of 
things. This effort embraces three subordinate ones. 
The first is a discussion of the universal forms under 
which alone we can know objects. This is metaphysics. 



494 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

The second is a consideration of the facts to which these 
forms are applicable. This gives cosmology and psychol- 
ogy. The third is a discussion of the judgments of ap- 
proval and disapproval called out by the forms of experi- 
ence. This inquiry is that of aesthetics and ethics. The 
first step is a clear and correct apprehension of the facts 
in each department, and of their relations to each other. 
Such a statement will prompt us to take the second step, 
to form some general idea of the method in which the 
separate systems of facts can be combined into one com- 
prehensive whole. The attitude of Lotze throughout is 
a very sober one, in which experience prompts and cor- 
rects speculation. His method of propounding and solv- 
ing the problems of philosophy is realistic throughout. 
His own conjectural answer, however, is framed under 
the notion of monads and the ruling idea of idealism — 
that space is a form given by the mind itself to its ex- 
periences. Lotze held that things are truly objective to 
us, though space is only the form under which relations 
— true being — are offered to us. God is the one supreme 
monad in the system of Lotze. We, in a measure, share 
his personality. The universal being is allied to ourselves, 
and involves the same diversity of states in complete 
unity. Matter stands only for the reality of relations 
presented to us by it. It is the language of the Divine 
Mind. The. teleological processes in the world could not 
otherwise be disclosed to us. These processes only are 
realities. The summation of all knowledge is the appre- 
hension of the divine purpose through those visible means 
which are its expression. The body is constructed as a 
medium of giving and receiving these spiritual impres- 
sions. Lotze urged that the conflicts of things disappear 
when we cease to consider the origin of things — some- 



LOTZE. 495 

thing beyond our knowledge — and confine our attention 
to things in their interactions, — a present revelation of 
God — holding them fast in the ways of wisdom assigned 
them. 

The philosophy of Lotze must depend for its power 
ver\- much on the force of the spiritual life which enter- 
tains it. We read the word, the Word of God, much as 
we read the works of a poet, and what we find is very 
largely determined by our own powers of reflection. The 
spiritual import and burden of the world will gain for us 
the dimensions of the Infinite Mind only as we enter into 
its beauty, its spiritual worth, and the scope of its purposes. 
Lotze appeals in his philosophy at once to the freedom 
and insight of the individual. Its monads are no essential 
part of it. We may hold it fast and give no rendering of 
its noumena beyond that simple and direct one involved 
in phenomena. Indeed, this method is more in harmony 
than his own with his fundamental conception, that reve- 
lation lies for us, not in substances, but in relations. The 
location of the soul as a monad in that portion of the brain 
which is without fibres may be regarded b}" us as fanciful 
and destitute of light, wdiile we hold fast to the essential 
unity of the two worlds expressed in the one supreme 
fact, that things are everywhere a reflection of thoughts. 
We are satisfied with the harmony of words and ideas, 
without the supposition that the two have the same sub- 
stantial being. Equally can we withhold our assent to 
the illusory nature of space-relations, and yet look upon 
matter simply as one term in the history of mind. The 
substantiality of the universe need not become to us 
primarily physical, nor its words of truth the implications 
of insensate things, because its physical terms hold fast in 
real being, true to the dependencies under which they are 



4g6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY. 

offered to us. It is only a question of the force of that 
vocal impulse with which the divine wisdom reveals itself. 
Validity, we may well believe, characterizes both the 
method and our impressions concerning it, as truly as it 
does the principles which are rendered under it as the 
spiritual realities of all things. Ultimate method, abso- 
lute substance, we must have under any view, because 
simple, primitive acts contain no relations and express 
no truth. We must not try to press meaning deeper than 
significant things. If we do, we abolish the fundamental 
distinction on which knowledge rests, substance and 
attribute, reality and the forms under which it appears. 
That • the validity of space, as an objective relation, 
excludes the activity of spirit under it, is a metaphysical 
fancy, finding no basis in reason and no confirmation in 
experience. 

Lotze resolved all things into spiritualism by making 
space a spiritual form. This conception, obliterating the 
materiality of material things, greatly weakens the force 
of one of those energies between which the universe lies 
as a created product. Spirit retains its own attributes 
largely by virtue of their complementary relation to things. 
The universe, as an integer, best discloses its integrity by 
keeping its units intact. We would not impel our boat 
in uniform motion by shifting a single paddle from side 
to side, but by a strong pair of oars bending to the same 
stroke. 

This view does not involve that matter is any other 
than pure force, permeated with pure thought ; it does 
involve that forces lie in coherent, permanent, causal re- 
lations, wholly unlike the energies of mind, and in con- 
stant reaction with them. Turn this half of the uni- 
verse into vapor, and the other half dissolves away with 



LOTZE. 497 

it. We are thrown back on invisible things, illusive to 
all our processes of knowledge. Space, as a true form- 
element, is not half so embarrassing as space an inescap- 
able, yet deceptive, habit of mind. 

It is playing fast and loose with the idea of space which 
enables the mind to entertain the notion of a spiritual 
monad, and to assign it position in that portion of the 
brain without fibres ; as if thereby there should be found 
a centre for receiving and giving influences. This is the 
mere dizziness of thought. Speculation is brought to 
its knees by too heavy a blow of the sensuous mallet of 
mechanism. 

The ethical system of Lotze is of the same free, 
personal character as his philosophy. It is sufficiently 
summed up in the single statement : " There is such a 
thing as a moral judgment of conduct only on the suppo- 
sition that this conduct leads to pleasure or pain. But to 
this conscience joins the farther truth, that it is not the 
effort after our own, but only that for the production of 
another's felicity which is .ethically meritorious ; and, ac- 
cordingly, that the idea of benevolence must give us the 
sole supreme principle of all moral conduct." Lotze 
united the acceptance of a supreme law with the freedom 
which enables us to fulfil it, and so gained the conditions 
of a truly spiritual life. It is pleasant to part with the 
philosophy of Germany at so high a point, one built up 
and supported by so much of its previous thought, and 
also one so suggestive of farther progress. If the good 
and the bad seed, which fell so freely from the hand 
of Kant, were alike productive, the better affirmations 
return, in each renewed circuit, with the greater strength. 



32 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CONCLUSION. 

§ I. German philosophy has been far more voluminous, 
varied, and vagrant than the philosophy of any other 
nation. Notwithstanding its extreme, subtile, and erratic 
tendencies, the readiness with which it has shaken off 
the restraints of experience and wandered endlessly in 
purely speculative regions, it has brought more stimulus 
to inquiry, and been more influential in ridding the mind 
of narrow, empirical notions, than any other form of mod- 
ern thought. Most of the spiritual insight — the awaken- 
ing of the mind to its own robust powers — that has come 
to English and French philosophy, has been occasioned 
or strengthened by German philosophy. 

The empirical philosophy of England, resting ulti- 
mately on the doctrine of evolution, has had a somewhat 
more continuous development than the speculation of 
Germany. In a single direction, it may rival this specu- 
lation in the practical value of its conclusions, but in 
scope and penetration there is very little ground for com- 
parison between the two forms of philosophy. 

Doubtless agnosticism has been strengthened by the 
remoteness, intangibility, and wholly unestablished char- 
acter of many of the conclusions reached by explorers, 
each fearlessly following his own slight clew, yet hardly 
more than by the crude identification by empiricism of 
spiritual and physical relations^ of the inner idea and force 



GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 499 

of a process with the process itself. This reading of the 
meaning out of things is certainly more barren in the end 
than the reading into them of ideas too remote and fan- 
tastic for the sober movement of truth. German philos- 
ophy has valiantly maintained, and, in the midst of its 
failures, helped to extend, the sense of certainty and 
range in that one supreme act, the act of knowing. It is 
not a philosophy that buries itself in ditches of its own 
digging, nor one that protects itself from the futility of 
its own labors by the plea of agnosticism. It has in it 
that buoyancy of power which, sobered and corrected by 
experience, will lead it from many positions and by many 
advances into the dawn of light. 

The conceptions involved in different German systems 
are often so shifting and pliant, that they may be used 
very differently by different minds as expositions of truth. 
Thus the absolute of Hegel may stand for an abstract, 
logical movement, whose unfolding, in the one world of 
thought, is as barren of life and personality, as innu- 
tritions to the spiritual nature, as is the evolution of 
things, driven onward by inherent, causal energies ; it 
may be a pantheism of dogmatic dependencies, the 
toughest integuments of thought ; or, to a mind like that 
of Professor Green, it may become a pervasive, intellect- 
ual element, taking on personal quality, and standing for 
the deep substructures of reason in a wholly rational 
world. All statements in philosophy are so inadequate 
as final presentations of truth, that they must be inter- 
preted, in the very flow of the stream of which they form 
a part. It is the combined movement that is significant, 
and not its detached propositions ; the course the mind is 
pursuing, and not each stepping-stone by which, for the 
moment, it supports itself. The vagueness and mobility 



500 THE CONCLUSION. 

of philosophy may help the mind onward in the explora-- 
tion of regions whose revelations must be made many 
times, with many modifications, before they settle down 
into familiar truths. 

Anthropomorphism, so obnoxious to philosophy, is 
never so offensive as when it is hidden from itself, fancies 
that negation is safer than afifirmation, and begins to in- 
terpret the universe by the lower things in it, not by the 
higher. This is to fling ourselves over the walls because 
the fortress is so difficult to possess and defend. We 
reach the next rung in the spiritual ladder from the last 
one ; we approach God as the fulness of reason by the 
paths of reason which lie open to us in our own minds. 
The true remedy for the infirmity of anthropomorphism is 
to recognize its inevitable character, and push beyond it 
by means of it. Our movement toward the higher forms 
of truth is like that mathematical proof in which we reach 
a conclusion by indefinite approximations. We trace a 
coincidence that is never complete. German philosophy 
sets its face forward ; and though its visions may, many of 
them, be too special and personal to repeat themselves 
twice in the same form, it is never without a vision. 

§ 2. A strong tendency toward monism has been a rul- 
ing, and frequently a misleading, impulse in German phi- 
losophy. The effort has been to reduce all to one, rather 
than to unite all in one. We can no more find our way 
outward from Tone to many, than we can find our way in- 
ward from many to one. The unity we pursue in mon- 
ism is physical rather than spiritual, identity rather than 
harmony. The unity which the mind demands is its own 
unity, a unity of relations, and this of necessity lies be- 
tween diverse things. It rejects dualism only when dual- 
ism is irreconcilable difference. Accepting the physical 



GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. $01 

and the spiritual as ultimate terms of experience, we have 
a universe of intellectual revelations, unrolled, stretched, 
pitched, like a tent, by the force of physical facts which 
are themselves expounded in this the service they render, 
as midway ground for mind, all minds. Here we find 
their spiritual significance, their relation backward and 
forward, and rest in a nature that is ever approaching a 
higher harmony, no matter into how many distinct parts 
and divided ends it may seem to have fallen. The deeper 
unity for which the mind is truly in search must be 
thrown forward as a final cause, not backward as an effi- 
cient cause. This without that is an illusion, the break- 
ing down of unity, not the winning of it ; the sinking into 
darkness of our thoughts about the world, not the rising 
of them into light. This voice of the reason, seeking 
for one, comprehensive, constructive, purposeful idea, we 
accept as the postulate of wide, rational inquiry, that by 
which thought completes itself, and becomes art. 

Monism was foreshadowed at the very opening of Ger- 
man philosophy in the monads of Leibnitz. It found its 
most direct expression in the doctrine of Spinoza ; — one 
eternal substance with the inseparable attributes, exten- 
sion and thought — yet if unity is in thought, thought 
cannot lie as a parallel attribute alongside of extension. 
It received in idealism a new direction and new enforce- 
ment : first, in the unfolding ego of Fichte ; later, in the 
absolute of Schelling ; and, last, in the universal process of 
Hegel. Schopenhauer and Hartmann gave it a new state- 
ment, on the empirical side, by putting will, and will and 
idea, at the centre of all things. Herbart found it in the 
interfusion of essences, and Lotze in the supreme monad. 

All this is simply a transfer of the question of unity 
from the intellectual world of relations to the substantial 



502 THE CONCLUSION. 

world of being. Substance, an opaque enigma if we un- 
dertake to question it, the serviceable symbol, x^ in our 
equations if we let it alone, thus becomes the leading, and 
so the misleading, conception of philosophy. We scruti- 
nize the characters which form our words, as if in them 
lay the secret of thought, and not in thought itself. Be- 
ing is fully and finally interpreted by the phenomena for 
whose sake alone we predicate it. Study the relations of 
phenomena, and we glide prosperously along the ways 
of thought ; attempt to penetrate to the nature of sub- 
stances, and we are instantly lost in a vague reproduction 
of phenomenal facts beyond the region of phenomena, 
as if there lay a world beneath a world to which we must 
penetrate. The architecture of spiritual things is not in 
substructures but in structures, not below the line of 
light but above it. The unity of mind lies in unity of 
the phenomena, and these declare the eternal coherence 
of rational being within itself. We are not to seek a 
reason for a reason, some deeper and dead substance the 
source of the congruity of intellectual life. The spirit is 
as free and vital as its conscious acts, for these are its 
disclosure. Nothing is plainer than reason, and reason 
lies in relations. The equivalence of cause and effect, 
substance and attribute, agent and action, spirit and 
spiritual process, will lie at the foundation of a philoso- 
phy that does not allow itself to be enticed beyond the 
limits of kno'wledge, or put to itself the futile problem of 
knowing how we know. 

If we look at physical and intellectual phenomena re- 
spectively, we find that they express and hold fast, by 
virtue of their differences, an extended, complex, and 
permanent network of relations ; that these relations are 
conditioned, in expression, on these differences ; that if 



MONISM. 503 

we withhold these articulate sounds, each in its own 
significance, the words of truth sink instantly back into 
silence. This fact itself is full of light, and needs no 
farther fact to expound it. This fact makes the method 
rational, and the effort to go beyond it is quizzing reason 
as to its reasonableness ; is an effort to find an inscrutable 
something as the ground of thought ; is a subversion of 
the universe, an effort to put at the bottom of it an 
eternally opaque term, being, instead of an eternally 
transparent one, thought, in whose diamond depths lies 
all the play of light. 

The monism of Germany was greatly aided by a con- 
stant recognition of unconscious, mental phenomena. 
This region of subconsciousness is one on which no em- 
pirical light, physical or spiritual, can possibly fall, and 
one whose creations and emanations and lines of causa- 
tion, therefore, are subject to no criteria, no corrections. 
All knowledge lies in consciousness, not beyond it. A 
beyond consciousness is to spiritual observation what 
a beyond space would be to sensuous inquiry. The mo- 
ment the mind leaves mental facts, under their own form- 
element, it is walking on air. The real significancy of a 
recognition of subconscious facts is that the permanent 
lines between two sets of phenomena are thereby obliter- 
ated, and they are allowed to flow into each other with no 
mode apprehended, or reason rendered. The two forms 
of phenomena, perfectly distinct in reciprocal power, are 
in constant interaction, but an interaction defined In 
terms of experience. The moment we obscure this fun- 
damental distinction, that moment we cease to study the 
empirical facts, the real reactions ; we find ourselves 
adrift among vague images and unverifiable assertions, 
and able truly to interpret nothing and to understand 



504 THE CONCLUSION. 

nothing, till we return to the terms under which alone 
the facts offer themselves to us. 

Here it is that agnosticism is the true wisdom. It is a 
refusal to know, not what is beyond our present knowl- 
edge, but what is, from the nature of the case, unknow- 
able, out of relation to all the forms of thought. That 
which is not conscious, and not physical, is non-existent, 
is the mere shadow of thoughts cast on empty space. If 
we are to solve our problem we must firmly grasp it, and 
that problem is the relation to each other of the only two 
and eternally distinct terms of experience, those we call 
physical and those we call mental, those which take on 
space relations and those which take on the relations of 
consciousness. As they are interlocked in all the activ- 
ities of thought, their unity lies there ; as their difference 
is a permanent factor in experience, their diversity lies 
there ; and this dichotomy is the first constructive term 
in reason. 

§ 3. We have attempted to give an interpretation of 
philosophy. The very effort pushes aside the notion of 
vague, unrestricted inquiry. It presupposes questions 
capable of just solutions, no matter how often answered 
inadequately or wrongly. Philosophy is a rounding out 
\of knowledge, an estimate of its terms in reference to 
each other, and a determination of their respective values. 
It is not surprising that this process should proceed slowly, 
nor that it should often lead, under the predilections of 
men for particular methods, to fanciful results. It is suffi- 
cient if this perpetual shifting of inquiry issues in a slow 
separation of the materials of knowledge, and in an 
increasingly just estimate of them. 

The nature of ideas, the stability and value of general 
conceptions, were the earliest questions, on the side of 



THE GROWTH OF PHILOSOPHY. 505 

psychology, raised by philosophy. A determination of 
the mental factors in the cosmos involves that of all other 
factors. The correspondence of ideas with some perma- 
nent form of facts was seen, in the very beginning of 
inquiry, to contain the secret of truth. Plato thought 
that general notions stand for eternal realities, and that 
the truly germinant, forceful, creative world is this very 
world of ideas. Aristotle regarded ideas as entities, 
but entities which have their existence in and with the 
things which express them. Then came the long dis- 
cussion, so central in the history of philosophy, of the 
relation of general terms, the counters of mind, to 
thino-3. The conclusion was reached, with much delav, 
difficulty, diversity, and reservation, that ideas are the 
intellectual counterparts of things, their significant quali- 
ties bundled up as concepts, and made, by generalization, 
to bind the world together along its lines of agreement. 
The mind, tracing the thoughts contained in things, stores 
up its labor in language. Language and the ideas it in- 
dicates thus stand for the discoveries of reason, busy with 
the connections contained in the permanent and fluid 
facts of the world. The world is a more enduring sym- 
bol, and language a less enduring symbol, of the same 
relations ; and the agreement of these two, reached by 
the insight of the mind, is truth. 

Then came the more modern inquiry, growing out of 
the earlier one, which has been presented wath equal 
patience and variety of discussion since the time of Des- 
cartes : Are these ideas, general terms, all of the same 
order? Does one explanation cover them all? The an- 
swer of Descartes was, they are not of the same order. 
Some of them stand for supersensuous relations, and 
are not to be found in a sensuous experience. They 



506 THE CONCLUSION. 

are like the particles in speech, which stand for invisible 
dependencies, not for visible things. Then came the re- 
sponse of Locke, that ideas are all equally derived from 
experience, some more obscurely and remotely, some 
more obviously and directly. 

This discussion has involved the very gist of knowing. 
Ls knowing action or is it reception ? Or, if both, in what 
relation do the two processes stand to each other ? In- 
tuitionalism, corrected by empiricism, holds that knowing, 
though constantly called out by experience, is essentially 
an act of its own supreme order ; that it is not a resid- 
uum of outward impressions, left as traces on a sensitive 
medium, or as modifications of a self-sustaining, organic 
process, in itself of an inferior order. Knowing is that 
supreme insight which can alone take knowledge from 
its symbols, symbols that owe their entire significance 
to their appeal to intellectual power. The intuitionalist, 
therefore, affirms that there are two sets of ideas, one 
antecedent in the order of existence to all interpretation, 
ideas by which interpretation becomes possible, and which 
stand for the most general relations under which reason 
constructs its judgments. These primitive ideas are the 
essential terms of reason itself, its eternal principles of 
order. Reason apprehends them not as a part of things, 
but as the constructive relations under which all things 
stand up to-gether as an intelligible universe. 

The fundamental character of these forms of thought 
being under discussion, there arises the division of the 
idealistic and materialistic tendencies concerning them. 
Idealism regards these forms as indeed primary, but as 
belonging to the mind itself, a part of its private equip- 
ment. At once, in place of the force and fine power of 
reason, we have limitations of human intelligence, barriers 



THE GROWTH OF PHILOSOPHY. 507 

it can never surmount. The relation in which these 
methods of ours stand to things-in-themselves, to the 
Eternal Reason, becomes a hopeless riddle. We see the 
devices on our own side of the shield, we know nothing 
of those on the farther face. We can escape from this 
unexpected pressure of the absolute relativity of all 
knowledge only by reflecting that, if knowledge is relative, 
it is not made thereby any less extensive than hitherto. 
It is still commensurate with the universe as we have 
known it. If the transcendental exists at all, it exists 
beyond the familiar range of human thought. All explo- 
ration remains exactly what it was before this notion was 
sprung upon us. Our conclusions still retain their old 
scope. The only question between the intuitionalist and 
transcendentalist is, whether there is another universe 
back of our universe, being that is not being as we know 
it, but something other than it. This is a question we can 
the more readily defer, as such a supersensuous and super- 
spiritual universe, if it be conceded, offers no proof of its 
presence, and leaves us wliolly undisturbed in the field of 
our own knowledge, as complete as ever within itself. 
Thus the limits put by idealism on our knowing practi- 
cally vanish again. The overblown bubble bursts, and we 
are left, as hitherto, in the presence of the one whole 
of all knowledge. We may then most rationally say of 
these form-elements, space, time, causation, consciousness, 
spontaneity, that they are involved in reason itself, are 
common to all reason ; that they define reason, and are 
defined by it ; are wholly at one with it by virtue of its 
own insight. But this is intuitionalism, only intuition- 
alism adds. Knowledge is one with itself everywhere ; in 
this sense absolute. 

One who builds the universe on the physical side looks 



508 THE COXCLUSIOX. 

upon these forms as the deepening impressions, the per- 
manent Hnes of order, in the process of transition from 
the unconscious to the conscious, from matter to mind. 
But of the real nature of this transfer, this perpetual 
miracle, he can tell us nothing. The lower begets the 
higher, he knows neither how nor why. The equality 
of causes and effects, the condition of all inquir}^, is 
neglected. The opaque, inapprehensive thing holds the 
transparent, significant truth, and relieves itself of it in 
due order of birth, in strange defiance of causal depend- 
encies. But if reason is born of unreason, nothing later 
can be irrational. Reason thereby loses its right to assert 
for itself universality. What is, not what is reasonable, 
is the supreme point. Reason, starting boldly out to ex- 
pound the world, sinks in the first quicksand. The intui- 
tionalist, therefore, in simple preservation of the problem, 
is compelled to say that an intelligence that is itself in 
the line of causation can explain nothing. The effort of 
explanation is an absurdity, and must either be abandoned 
or take to itself powers proportionate to its purposes. 
But reason is invincible. It submits to no detraction ; it 
gives way to no ridicule. Hence the empiricist unwit- 
tingly, and the intuitionalist wittingly, go straight forward 
to assert the ail-comprehending character of rational rela- 
tions, and so we are restored again to our primitive 
powers. In. the case of idealism, w^e affirmed our knowl- 
edge to be relative, and went to vv'ork with it as if it were 
universal. In the case of materialism, we asserted that 
our powers are acquired, and take their position among 
the products of a universe antecedent to themselves. 
Yet we instantly employed them to judge all things, as 
if they had been brought forth when there were yet no 
depths. 



CONSTRUCTIVE REALISM. 509 

Constructive realism, resting on experience, taking in- 
telligible form under the primitive notions of reason, 
offers itself, in a historic interpretation of philosophy, 
as the one movement which gathers in all the fruits of 
thought. It allows the rational processes to sink down- 
ward to the first incipient activities of mind, and to rise 
with them and above them, at ever}- stage of develop- 
ment, into the growing light. It lays aside the dogma- 
tism of natural realism. It accepts the enlarging con- 
structions of thought, both in physical and spiritual 
being. It afifirms reality, on either hand, but under rea- 
son and for the ends of reason, and stands by the powers 
of the mind in sensation, insight, reflection. 

Constructive realism asserts with idealism the prior, 
comprehensive quality of fundamental ideas, but it avoids 
that illusion of idealism, things-in-themselves, the uncer- 
tain shadows of transcendental notions, which serve only 
to perplex and confuse our vision. It afifirms the eternal 
identity of reason with itself, that its insights and pro- 
cesses, like the revelations of light, are and must be co- 
herent everyAvhere. To treat them otherwise is to divide 
them against themselves to their final overthrow. What 
possible end is met by the supposition that the forms of 
knowledge are wholly relative, and that there are, there- 
fore, unattainable relations involved in the reality of 
things ? If we know at all, why should not we know 
the ver\^ things to be known? A supposition of impo- 
tence is not to be entertained on any other than the 
most positive proof. The widest induction possible, that 
bv which we add truth to truth throusrh the whole ranee 
of knowledge, is against it. The validity of our faculties, 
involved in their indefatigable use, vouches for the verity 
of our convictions ; and the coherence of our convictions. 



510 THE CONCLUSION. 

through the whole range of experience, vouches for the 
vahdity of our faculties. If we are to attain truth, we 
must start with it as the primordial fact of mind, its 
essential nature. In this extension of reason to all limits, 
we are at one with the ruling conviction of the human 
mind. 

Constructive realism strikes hands with empiricism in 
alarming the ever renewed suggestiveness of the world of 
realities ; that it alone offers the highways of thought 
which the mind can safely and productively travel. Yet it 
rejects most positively the assertion that the inner and the 
outer, the process and the impelling power, are essentially 
one. It sets no store by the husk of the world, when it 
has lost its germinant, spiritual life. Not even the in- 
stinct of the squirrel will suffer it to fill its nest with nuts 
already pierced. Much less, then, will mind, enamoured 
of its own powers, empty the facts before it of their most 
permanent intellectual uses. 

Constructive realism is able to gather proof to itself, on 
either hand, not merely because it runs midway along 
the line of division between opposed theories, not simply 
because it can reconcile with each other the truths it so 
widely appropriates, but because it lays down the orbit of 
equilibrium between contending and vagrant forces. If 
philosophy passes into idealism, it is quickly forced back 
toward mate-rialism by the pressure of unreconciled tend- 
encies ; if it is deflected toward materialism, the energies 
of mind begin at once to work against it and drive it, 
in rapid curvature, in the opposite direction. The line 
of reconciliation must lie, as shown by the entire history 
of philosophy, somewhere between these two evenly 
matched, ever returning, forces. The supposition be- 
comes natural and just, that the union is to be found in 



CONSTRUCTIVE REALlSiSI, 51I 

the reality of all the elements of knowledge and their 
even-handed construction in thought. Grant the perma- 
nent significance of sensuous symbols, concede the valid- 
ity of the insights of the mind, trust ourselves freely to 
those reflective processes by which these two are woven 
into knowledge, and we attain to that growing harmony 
of truth which is the soul of its infinite nature. 

When the impulse of any new theory is expended, when 
it begins to feel the need of correction and restraint, its 
line of curvature is always toward realism. Realism, like 
the attraction of the earth, stands for that steady energy 
which, in the end, must tell on the most reckless and 
divergent movement. 

The underlying suppositions of philosophy thus become 
the same with those of all knowledge. The questions 
that remain unanswered are unanswered because, like 
those of a child, they either go back of first principles, or 
are prematurely put. A knowledge, which is a knowledge 
of relations, must accept the terms between which these 
relations lie, as conditions of the entire movement. The 
simple points and lines which compose the diagram can- 
not themselves be made the occasion of exhaustless dis- 
cussion. The truth is not in them, but in that which 
they disclose. The forms of reason are a part of reason, 
rather than the objects of reason. When we accept rea- 
son, we accept it for what it is, a transcendent, not a tran- 
scendental power. We abide in the suf^ciency of the 
processes which have so far defined truth for us. 

Philosophy, in all its history, has been simply finding 
its way to the assured conviction, that truth is the eter- 
nal coalescence of the physical and the spiritual, the outer 
and the inner, in one wide-spreading and immeasurable 
fact, the interlacing of all events along a line of light 



512 THE CONCLUSION. . 

which is the pathway of mind, the revelation of God and 
the discovery of men. Here our thoughts rest themselves 
in unending activity ; here also, obedient to inspiration, 
lie the labors of ethics and art. A realistic statement of 
this order gathers in more profound truth, from more 
diverse quarters, than any other apprehension of the rela- 
tion of man to the world and of the world to man. It, 
therefore, more than any other, justifies itself to reason, 
as holding for it the largest wealth of knowledge. 

The sophist opened philosophy by denying the signifi- 
cancy of ideas, their power to contain and present the 
facts. From that moment onward, the discussion has 
progressed along the path thus assigned it, the relation 
of ideas to the facts they seem to cover. It is now draw- 
ing near the conclusion that ideas are the clear reflections, 
mirrored in mind, of the eternal truths of the spiritual 
universe. 

A philosophy whose explanations lie remote from the 
facts our lives are busy in discovering and handling, whose 
suppositions are beyond construction, and beyond verifi- 
cation, under the familiar terms of experience, can have 
but little claim on our attention. A philosophy resting 
on the powers of mind, each ultimate in its own ofifice, 
helps to compact knowledge by unfolding its harmonious 
and self-supporting relations, and disclosing the revela- 
tions it bears with it from limit to limit of the world in 
which we are. This philosophy is nothing more than the 
completion, correction, rectification of the knowing proc- 
ess, every moment with us in each lighter and each 
weightier exploration. When all knowledge coalesces 
and flows together, like an atmosphere alive with light, 
we have philosophy, the unity of truth within itself. 
Our effort has been the simple yet difficult one of show- 



CONSTRUCTIVE REALISM. 513 

ing from how many points single rays are reflected back 
on the one flood of revelation, how easily revelation 
gathers in all special disclosure. By reducing philosophy 
to a minimum as embracing private and ingenious de- 
vices, we have raised it to a maximum in the generality 
and scope of its uses. Let it reign as the penetrative 
and universal power of thought. 

33 



INDEX. 



A. 



Abelard, 131. 
^Enesidemus, 68. 
Albertus Magnus, 134. 
Alexander of Hales, 134. 
Alexandria, church of, 99. 
America, philosophy of, 310. 
Anaxagoras, 24. 
Anaximander, 14. 
Anaximenes, 14. 
Anselm, 130. 
Anthropomorphism, 500. 
Antinomies of Kant, 39S, 401, 402, 

403. 
Antiochus, 70. 
Antisthenes, 35. 
Antoninus, 63. 
Aquinas, 116, 135. 
Aristippus, 35, 58. 
Aristotle, 29, 45 ; philosophy of, 48 ; 

ethics, 51 ; logic, 54 ; compared 

with Plato, 55, 103. 
Arnold, 365. 
Athanasius, loi. 
Atomists, 23. 
Augustine, loi. 
Averroes, 133, 368. 



B. 



" Back to Kant," 426. 

Bacon, 164, 202. 

Bain, 243. 

Beneke, 488 ; four processes, 489 ; 

ethics, 490. 
Bentham, 269. 
Berkeley, 280. 
Biran, 360, 362. 
Botta, 370. 
Bowne, 322. 
Brown, 299. 



Bruno, 159, 193. 
Buchner, 467. 
Butler, 283. 



Caldervvood, 307. 

Carneades, 67. 

Carpenter, 255. 

Categories, Aristotle, 55 ; Kant, 410. 

Cato, 67. 

Cerebration, unconscious, 256, 

Cicero, 70. 

Clarke, 279 

Clement, 66, 99. 

Coleridge, 284. 

Comte, 335. 

Concepts, discussion concerning, 108- 

120. 
Condillac, 330. 
Cosmology, 9, 27. 
Cousin, 361. 

" Critique of the Judgment," 423. 
" Critique of the Practical Reason," 

416. 
Cudworth, 279. 
Cynics, 35. 



D. 



D'Alembert, 332. 

Darwin, 220. 

De la Mettrie, 327. 

Democritus, 23. 

Descartes, 167 ; his first truths, 167 ; 
innate ideas, 172 ; dualism, 173 ; 
the interaction of matter and mind, 
178 ; ethics, 180 ; Descartes and 
Leibnitz, 193, 196 ; animal life, 327. 

Development of philosophy, 504. 

Diderot, 332. 

Diogenes. 35. 

Dualism, 173. 



5i6 



INDEX. 



E. 

Eckhart, 150. 

Eclecticism, 6g. 

Ecstasy as insight, 83. 

Edwards, 281, 310. 

Empedocles, 24. 

Epictetus, 63. 

Epicurus, 58 ; reasons of his belief, 

59- 

Ethics, of Socrates, 34 ; of Plato, 44 ; 
of Aristotle, 51 ; ethics which fol- 
lowed Socrates, 57 ; of empiricism, 
267 ; of Edwards, 314 ; of Jouf- 
froy, 367; of Kant, 3S1. 

Erigena, 127. 

Euclid, 34. 

Evolution, 259. 

F. 

Fechner, 470. 

Ferguson, 307. 

Ferrari, 373. 

Fichte, 432. 

Fiske, 321. 

Form elements and Kant, 388, 405. 

Franchi, 373. 

Freedom of will, 140, 147, 311. 

French, philosophy of, 325. 

G. 

Galileo, 36S. 
Galuppi, 371.^ 

Germany, philosophy of, 375 ; rela- 
tions, 498. 
Geulinx, 178. 
Gioberti, 372. 
Gioja,_ 37 T. 
Gnosticism, 75. - 
God, the being of, Kant, 404. 
Gorgias, 32. 

Greece, philosophy of, 12. 
Greek church, 100. 

H. 

Hall, 321. 

Hamilton, 300 ; i-elativity of knowl- 
edge, 300 ; the infinite, 302 ; direct 
perception, 302 ; association, 303 ; 
law of the conditioned, 304. 



Harris, 322. 

Harrison, 274. 

Hartley, 218. 

Hartmann, 461. 

Hegel, 440 ; comprehensiveness, 443; 
division among followers, 444 ; his 
triplet, 445 ; his idealism, 447, 452 ; 
monism, 450 ; absolute, 451 ; his 
merit, 457. 

Hellenistic philosophy, 71, 75. 

Helvetius, 331. 

Heraclitus, 20, 62. 

Herbart, 474 ; things irreconcilable, 
475 ; theory, 476 ; criticism, 477 ; 
measurements, 482. 

Herbert, 275. 

Hickok, 319, 387. 

Hobbes, 208. 

Holbach, d', 331. 

Hopkins, 318 ; his ethics, 320. 

Humanists, 157. 

Hume, 221 ; his nihilism, 222 ; be- 
lief, 225 ; influence, 226 ; union of 
extremes, 227 ; miracles, 228 ; 
ground of his opinions, 230. 

Huxley, 255, 263. 



Idealism, 377, 428, 483. 
Infinite, 302, 304. 
Intuitionalism in France, 355. 
Italy, philosophy of, 368. 



J- 



Jacobi, 485. 
James, 322. 
Janet, 367. 
Jouffroy, 367. 



K. 



Knowledge, nature of, 2, 506. 



L. 



Latin church, lOO. 

Leibnitz, 193 ; questions, 193 ; j2ix>- 
nads, 195 ; idealism, 198 ; relation 
to Locke, 200 ; religion, 201 ; dual- 
ism, 202. 






INDEX. 



517 



Locke, 200 ; the undeistanding, 211; 

sources of knowledge, 212 ; innate 

ideas, 212'; religious notions, 215 ; 

inconsistency, 216 ; influence, 217. 
Logic of Aristotle, 54. 
Lotze. 491 ; relations, 492 ; problem 

of philosophy, 493; spiritual power, 

494 ; ethics, 497. 
Lucretius, 61. 



M. 



IMackintosh, 307. 

Malebranche, 179. 

jNIamiani, 373. 

Martineau, 284 ; statement of doc- 
trine, 285 ; causation, 287 ; free- 
dom of will, 2S7 ; influence, 289. 

jNIcCosh, 315 ; direct perception, 315. 

Mediaeval philosophy, 91. 

Mill, James, 231. 

Mill, John Stuart, 235 ; his logic, 
235 ; his position, 240 ; causation, 
242. 

Modern philosophy, 152. 

Monads, 193, 197. 

Monism, 181, 500. 

More, 279. 

Mysticism, 150. 

N.' 

Neo-Platonists, 71, 77. 
Neo-Pythagoreans, 71, 77. 
Nihilism, 222, 230. 
Nominalists, 106, no, 132. 
Noumena, 392, 396. 



O. 



Origen, 66, 99. 



Paley, 268. 
Panaetius, 62. 
Parmenides, 17. 
Pascal, 355. 
Patristic period, 96. 
Perception, direct, 302. 



Philo, 74. 

Philosophy, nature of, 2, 375 ; divis- 
ions, 8. 

Physiological psychology, 468. 

Plato, 28, 36 ; ideas, 37 ; matter, 39 ; 
nature of ideas, 40 ; sophists, 42 ; 
value of his work, 43 ; ethics, 44 ; 
idea of God, 47 ; compared with 
Aristotle, 55. 

Plotinus, 77. 

Porphyry, 79. 

Porter, 315 

Positivism, 335, 374. 

Priestley, 220. 

Proclus, 80. 

Protagoras, 32. 

Psychology, 9, 27 376. 

Pythagoras, 15. 

Pyrrho, 67. 



R. 



Realism, 104, 129, 132, 379, 485 

constructive realism, 510. 
Reformation, 159. 
Reid, 292. 
Relationism, 119. 
Relativity of knowledge, 300. 
Romagnosi, 371. 
Romanes, 257. 
Roscellihus, 114, 132, 
Rosmini, 371. 
Royer-Collard, 360, 362. 



S. 



Schelling, 438. 

Schleiermacher. 486. 

Scholasticism, 155. 

Schopenhauer, 459. 

Science, nature of, 4 ; early effects, 

158. 
Scottish philosophy, 290. 
Scotus, 145. 
Seneca, 63. 
Sidgwick, 271. 
Smith, Adam, 307. 
Sociology, 346. 
Socrates, 29 ; relation to the Sophists, 

33 ; ethics, 34 ; disciples, 34. 



5i8 



INDEX. 



Sophists, 29. 

Spencer, 244 ; notion of intelligence, 
245 ; association, 248 ; deductive, 
249 ; imaginative, 251 ; causation, 
252 ; " The Unknown," 253 ; gen- 
eral character of philosophy, 254 ; 
ethics, 271. 

Spinoza, 186 ; his fundamental idea, 
187 ; completeness of theory, 188 ; 
difficulties, 189 ; reverence, igo ; 
results, 191 ; ethics, 192. 

Stephen, 271. 

Stewart, 298. 

Stoicism, 61 ; teachers, 62 ; beliefs, 
63 ; character of, 64 ; ascetic ten- 
dency, 65 ; influence, 66. 

St. John, 73, 75. 

Synthetic judgments, 382. 

T. 

Taine, 332. 
Tauler, 150. 
Thales, 14. 

Theosophy, 71, 81, 84. 
Things-in-themselves, 386, 390. 
Trinity, 76. 



U. 



Unbelief and modern philosophy, 

159- 
Universals, 124. 
" Unknown," 253. 



Ventura, 370. 
Vera, 373. 
Vico, 369. 



W. 



Weber, 470. 

Will, freedom of, Aquinas, 140 ; Sco- 
tus, 147 ; Martineau, 287 ; Ed- 
wards, 311. 

William of Occam, 115, 148. 

Wundt, 472. 



Z. 



Zeller, 473, 486. 
Zeno of Elea, 18. 
Zeno of Citium, 61. 



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